Walker Percy

“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.”

“You live in a deranged age - more deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.”

“The specific character of despair is precisely this: it is unaware of being despair.”

“Bad books always lie. They lie most of all about the human condition.”

“We love those who know the worst of us and don't turn their faces away.”

“I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really listens.”

“To be a Southerner is to be torn between loving and hating it.”

“Since the end of the nineteenth century, despair has been accumulating in the very heart of the twentieth-century paradise.”

“Every explorer is, consciously or unconsciously, a seeker of God.”

“Curiosity is the most powerful thing you own.”

“The present age is the most sentimental in all of history.”

“In this world, goodness is destined to be defeated.”

“There is a secret which I have not told you: we are all in a cage of our own making.”

“What you have to do is enter the army of losers.”

“The fact is I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie.”

“The main difficulty of the present age is a spiritual one and the problem is not how to be good but how to be.”

“Everydayness is the enemy. No search is possible. Perhaps there is no search.”

“A man can be an artist... in anything, food, whatever. It happens largely in one's own head.”