Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe that every possibility is open to him. Walker Percy More Quotes by Walker Percy More Quotes From Walker Percy Why has the South produced so many good writers? Because we got beat. Walker Percy south beats good-writers I had discovered that a person does not have to be this or be that or be anything, not even oneself. One is free. Walker Percy persons doe fun I am not ashamed to use the word class. I will also plead guilty to another charge. The charge is that people belonging to my class think they're better than other people. You're damn right we're better. We're better because we do not shirk our obligations either to ourselves or to others. . . .we live by our lights, we die by our lights, and whoever the high gods may be, we'll look them in the eye without apology. Walker Percy apology eye thinking What is the nature of the search? you ask. Really it is very simple, at least for a fellow like me; so simple that it is easily overlooked. The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. This morning, for example, I felt as if I had come to myself on a strange island. Walker Percy simple islands morning Consciously cultivate the ordinary. Walker Percy ordinary The enduring is something which must be accounted for. One cannot simply shrug it off. Walker Percy endure Bad books always lie. They lie most of all about the human condition. Walker Percy human-condition book lying It is not a bad thing to settle for the Little Way, not the big search for the big happiness but the sad little happiness of drinks and kisses, a good little car and a warm deep thigh. Walker Percy car kissing littles What needs to be discharged is the intolerable tenderness of the past, the past gone and grieved over and never made sense of. Music ransoms us from the past, declares an amnesty, brackets and sets aside the old puzzles. Sing a new song. Start a new life, get a girl, look into her shadowy eyes, smile. Walker Percy girl eye song For the world is broken, sundered, busted down the middle, self ripped from self and man pasted back together as mythical monster, half angel, half beast, but no man...Some day a man will walk into my office as a ghost or beast or ghost-beast and walk out as a man, which is to say sovereign wanderer, lordly exile, worker and waiter and watcher. Walker Percy angel self men Where there is chance of gain, there is also chance of loss. Whenever one courts great happiness, one also risks malaise. Walker Percy gains risk loss It is possible, however, that the artist is both thin-skinned and prophetic and, like the canary lowered into the mine shaft to test the air, has caught a whiff of something lethal. Walker Percy tests artist air But what physician has not had patients who don't make any sense at all? To tell the truth, they're our stock-in-trade. We talk and write about the ones we can make sense of. Walker Percy medical physicians writing Joy and sadness come by turns. Walker Percy turns sadness joy Ooooh," Kate groans, Kate herself now. "I'm so afraid." "I know." "What am I going to do?" "You mean right now?" "Yes." "We'll go to my car. Then we'll drive down to the French Market and get some coffee. Then we'll go home." "Is everything going to be all right?" "Yes." "Tell me. Say it." "Everything is going to be all right. Walker Percy coffee home mean Since grief only aggravates your loss, grieve not for what is past. Walker Percy heartbreak grief loss Classes? Categories? Was that what we had come to? Walker Percy categories class But there is much to be said for giving up ... grand ambitions and living the most ordinary life imaginable. Walker Percy giving-up ambition ordinary Life is fits and starts, mostly fits. Walker Percy fit life-is A novel is what you call something that won't sell if you call it poems or short stories. Walker Percy novel stories fiction
