Books Quote by Walker Percy

“Do you know what he told me after lying under a cliff for thirty six hours with two inches of his femur sticking out?…

— Walker Percy

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

“The real wonder is not that the Cosmos is now seen as wonderful but that it is not. Despite its inconceivable vastness, it is…

— Walker Percy

“Ours is the only civilization in history which has enshrined mediocrity as its national ideal. Others have been corrupt, but leave it to us…

— Walker Percy

[In art] you are telling the reader or the listener or the viewer something he already knows but which he doesn't quite know that…

— Walker Percy

“People usually told him the same joke two or three times.”

— Walker Percy

For the world is broken, sundered, busted down the middle, self ripped from self and man pasted back together as mythical monster, half angel,…

— Walker Percy

Nobody but a Southerner knows the wrenching rinsing sadness of the cities of the North.

— Walker Percy

“For me, all signifiers fit me, one as well as another. I am rascal, hero, craven, brave, treacherous, loyal, at once the secret hero…

— Walker Percy

“But the expectation of the self, to be informed in its nothingness--if only I can get out of this old place and into the…

— Walker Percy

Nothing remains but desire, and desire comes howling down Elysian Fields like a mistral.

— Walker Percy

“A variant of the amnesic-plot device is the inadvertent return of the amnesiac to home territory, where he is welcomed by a lovely woman,…

— Walker Percy