But there is much to be said for giving up ... grand ambitions and living the most ordinary life imaginable. Walker Percy More Quotes by Walker Percy More Quotes From Walker Percy You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing. Walker Percy men life ideas How did it happen that now he could see everything so clearly. Something had given him leave to live in the present. Not once in his entire life had he come to rest in the quiet center of himself but had forever cast himself from some dark past he could not remember to a future that did not exist. Not once had he been present for his life. So his life had passed like a dream. Is it possible for people to miss their lives the way one can miss a plane? Walker Percy dark dream past In this world goodness is destined to be defeated. But a man must go down fighting. That is the victory. To do anything less is to be less than a man. Walker Percy victory fighting men To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Walker Percy possibility We love those who know the worst of us and don't turn their face away. Walker Percy real love friendship In a word, the consumer of mass culture is lonely, not only lonely, but spiritually impoverished. Walker Percy lonely inspiration faith I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair? Walker Percy drink despair beer The present age is demented. It is possessed by a sense of dislocation, a loss of personal identity, an alternating sentimentality and rage which, in an individual patient, could be characterized as dementia. Walker Percy identity age loss Have you noticed that only in time of illness or disaster or death are people real? Walker Percy illness real people Americans are the nicest, most generous, and sentimental people on earth. Yet Americans have killed more unborn children than any nation in history. Walker Percy earth children people The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair. Walker Percy possibility despair spiritual I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really wants to listen. When it does at last dawn on a man that you really want to hear about his business, the look that comes over his face is something to see. Walker Percy dawn men people Fiction doesn’t tell us something we don’t know, it tells us something we know but don’t know that we know. Walker Percy knows fiction Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe that every possibility is open to him. Walker Percy doe men believe Home may be where the heart is but it's no place to spend Wednesday afternoon. Walker Percy afternoon home heart The difference between a non-suicide and an ex-suicide leaving the house for work, at eight o'clock on an ordinary morning: The non-suicide is a little traveling suck of care, sucking care with him from the past and being sucked toward care in the future. His breath is high in his chest. The ex-suicide opens his front door, sits down on the steps, and laughs. Since he has the option of being dead, he has nothing to lose by being alive. It is good to be alive. He goes to work because he doesn't have to. Walker Percy suicide morning past Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion. Walker Percy diversion wander You can get all A's and still flunk life. Walker Percy life-learning education school For some time now the impression has been growing upon me that everyone is dead. It happens when I speak to people. In the middle of a sentence it will come over me: yes, beyond a doubt this is death. There is little to do but groan and make an excuse and slip away as quickly as one can. Walker Percy growing doubt people Hatred strikes me as one of the few signs of life remaining in the world. This is another thing about the world which is upsidedown: all the friendly and likable people seem dead to me; only the haters seem alive. Walker Percy hatred friendly people
