Walker Percy
Walker Percy
Walker Percy, Obl.S.B.was an American author from Covington, Louisiana, whose interests included philosophy and semiotics. Percy is known for his philosophical novels set in and around New Orleans, Louisiana, the first of which, The Moviegoer, won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. He devoted his literary life to the exploration of "the dislocation of man in the modern age." His work displays a combination of existential questioning, Southern sensibility, and deep Catholic faith...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth28 May 1916
CountryUnited States of America
The so-called sexual revolution is not, as advertised, a liberation of sexual behavior but rather its reversal. In former days, even under Victoria, sexual intercourse was the natural end and culmination of heterosexual relations. Now one begins with genital overtures instead of a handshake, then waits to see what will turn up (e.g., might become friends later). Like dogs greeting each other nose to tail and tail to nose.
Why has the South produced so many good writers? Because we got beat.
The enduring is something which must be accounted for. One cannot simply shrug it off.
I had discovered that a person does not have to be this or be that or be anything, not even oneself. One is free.
Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
The fact is I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie. Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives...
Joy and sadness come by turns.
Losing hope is not so bad. There's something worse: losing hope and hiding it from yourself.
Since grief only aggravates your loss, grieve not for what is past.
But there is much to be said for giving up ... grand ambitions and living the most ordinary life imaginable.
Whenever I feel bad, I go to the library and read controversial periodicals. Though I do not know whether I am a liberal or a conservative, I am nevertheless enlivened by the hatred which one bears the other. In fact, this hatred strikes me as one of the few signs of life remaining in the world.
Nobody but a Southerner knows the wrenching rinsing sadness of the cities of the North.
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.
Consciously cultivate the ordinary.