Walker Percy

“Why do people often feel bad in good environments and good in bad environments? Why did Mother Teresta think that affluent Westerners…

— Walker Percy

“The earth-self observing the Cosmos and trying to understand the Cosmos by scientific principles from which its self is excluded is, beyond…

— Walker Percy

Ignorance, if recognized, is often more fruitful than the appearance of knowledge.

— Walker Percy

“He registered a dizzy 7.6 mmv over Brodmann 32, the area of abstractive activity. Since that time I have learned that a…

— Walker Percy

“It is otherwise with sports and the media. There, too, a shift has occurred, from active participation to the vicarious participation of…

— Walker Percy

“but we know in the South that the real purpose of manners is to make life easier for everyone, easier both to…

— Walker Percy

Ooooh," Kate groans, Kate herself now. "I'm so afraid." "I know." "What am I going to do?" "You mean right now?" "Yes."…

— Walker Percy

“Tell me something. Why did I have to know the truth about Margot and know it with absolute certainty? Or rather why,…

— Walker Percy

Have you noticed that only in time of illness or disaster or death are people real?

— Walker Percy

“How much better it would be if they weren't so damn understanding--if they kicked me out of the house. To find yourself…

— Walker Percy

“i had spent four years propped on the front porch of the fraternity house, bemused and dreaming, watching the sun shine through…

— Walker Percy

“I have observed that it is no longer possible for one young man to speak unwarily to another not known to him,…

— Walker Percy

“...the self can be as desperately stranded in the transcendence of theory as in the immanence of consumption.”

— Walker Percy

“I'll make you a little confession. I am not ashamed to use the word class. I will also plead guilty to another…

— Walker Percy

Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe that every possibility is open to him.

— Walker Percy

“the origin of consciousness is the initiation of the sign-user into the world of signs by a sign-giver.”

— Walker Percy

“The Self since the time of Descartes has been stranded, split off from everything else in the Cosmos, a mind which professes…

— Walker Percy

My mother refused to let me fail. So I insisted.

— Walker Percy

What is the nature of the search? you ask. Really it is very simple, at least for a fellow like me; so…

— Walker Percy

It is possible, however, that the artist is both thin-skinned and prophetic and, like the canary lowered into the mine shaft to…

— Walker Percy

“I stood up. Can a man stand alone, naked, and at his ease, wrist flexed at his side like Michelangelo's David, without…

— Walker Percy

“Soap shining beauty. ”

— Walker Percy

I sometimes think novelists write about sex in order to avoid boring themselves to death.

— Walker Percy

If I had the choice of knowing the truth or searching for the truth, I'd take the search.

— Walker Percy

Why is there such a gap between nonspeaking animals and speaking man, when there is no other such gap in nature?

— Walker Percy