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Nowadays When A Person Lives Somewhere, In A Neighborhood, The Place Is Not Certified For Him. More Than Likely He Will Live There Sadly And The Emptiness Which Is Inside Him Will Expand Until It Evacuates The Entire Neighborhood. But If He Sees A Movie Which Shows His Very Neighborhood, It Becomes Possible For Him To Live, For A Time At Least, As A Person Who Is Somewhere And Not Anywhere.

-Walker Percy

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Nowadays When A Person

Walker Percy

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Nowadays When A Person Lives Somewhere, In A Neighborhood, The Place Is Not Certified For Him. More Than Likely He Will Live There Sadly And The Emptiness Which Is Inside Him Will Expand Until It Evacuates The Entire Neighborhood. But If He Sees A Movie Which Shows His Very Neighborhood, It Becomes Possible For Him To Live, For A Time At Least, As A Person Who Is Somewhere And Not Anywhere.

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Old Neighborhood

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Rest Of Your Life

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A Good Title Should Be Like A Good Metaphor. It Should Intrigue Without Being Too Baffling Or Too Obvious.

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.

You Can Get All A's And Still Flunk Life.

Like Many Young Men In The South, He Had Trouble Ruling Out The Possible. They Are Not Like An Immigrant's Son In Passaic Who Desires To Become A Dentist And That Is That. Southerners Have Trouble Ruling Out The Possible. What Happens To A... Man To Whom All Things Seem Possible And Every Course Of Action Open? Nothing Of Course.

Ignorance, If Recognized, Is Often More Fruitful Than The Appearance Of Knowledge.

There Is No Pain On This Earth Like Seeing The Same Woman Look At Another Man The Way She Once Looked At You.

I Couldn't Stand It. I Still Can't Stand It. I Can't Stand The Way Things Are. I Cannot Tolerate This Age.

Consciously Cultivate The Ordinary.

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.

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.

Maybe There Are Times When An Honest Hatred Serves Us Better Than Love Corrupted By Sentimentality, Meretriciousness, Sententiousness, Cuteness.

Home May Be Where The Heart Is But It's No Place To Spend Wednesday Afternoon.

I Have Discovered That Most People Have No One To Talk To, No One, That Is, Who Really Wants To Listen. When It Does At Last Dawn On A Man That You Really Want To Hear About His Business, The Look That Comes Over His Face Is Something To See.

I Like To Eat Crawfish And Drink Beer. That's Despair?

This Midwestern Sky Is The Nakedest Loneliest Sky In America. To Escape It, People Live Inside And Underground.

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.

Not To Be Onto Something Is To Be In Despair.

For Some Time Now The Impression Has Been Growing Upon Me That Everyone Is Dead. It Happens When I Speak To People. In The Middle Of A Sentence It Will Come Over Me: Yes, Beyond A Doubt This Is Death. There Is Little To Do But Groan And Make An Excuse And Slip Away As Quickly As One Can.

The Mystery Lies In The Here And Now. The Mystery Is: What Is One To Do With Oneself? As You Get Older You Begin To Realize The Trick Time Is Playing, And That Unless You Do Something About It, The Passage Of Time Is Nothing But The Encroachment Of The Horrible Banality Of The Past On The Pure Future. The Past Devours The Future Like A Tape Recorder, Converting Pure Possibility Into Banality. The Present Is The Tape Head, The Mouth Of Time. Then Where Is The Mystery And Why Bother Kicking Through The Ashes? Because There Is A Clue In The Past.

They All Think Any Minute I'm Going To Commit Suicide. What A Joke. The Truth Of Course Is The Exact Opposite: Suicide Is The Only Thing That Keeps Me Alive. Whenever Everything Else Fails, All I Have To Do Is Consider Suicide And In Two Seconds I'm As Cheerful As A Nitwit. But If I Could Not Kill Myself -- Ah Then, I Would. I Can Do Without Nembutal Or Murder Mysteries But Not Without Suicide.

Lord, Grant That My Work Increase Knowledge And Help Other Men. Failing That, Lord, Grant That It Will Not Lead To Man’s Destruction. Failing That, Lord, Grant That My Article In Brain Be Published Before The Destruction Takes Place.

Hatred Strikes Me As One Of The Few Signs Of Life Remaining In The World. This Is Another Thing About The World Which Is Upsidedown: All The Friendly And Likable People Seem Dead To Me; Only The Haters Seem Alive.

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The Difference Between A Non-suicide And An Ex-suicide Leaving The House For Work, At Eight O'clock On An Ordinary Morning: The Non-suicide Is A Little Traveling Suck Of Care, Sucking Care With Him From The Past And Being Sucked Toward Care In The Future. His Breath Is High In His Chest. The Ex-suicide Opens His Front Door, Sits Down On The Steps, And Laughs. Since He Has The Option Of Being Dead, He Has Nothing To Lose By Being Alive. It Is Good To Be Alive. He Goes To Work Because He Doesn't Have To.

Americans Are The Nicest, Most Generous, And Sentimental People On Earth. Yet Americans Have Killed More Unborn Children Than Any Nation In History.

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Your Discovery, As Best As I Can Determine, Is That There Is An Alternative Which No One Has Hit Upon. It Is That One Finding Oneself In One Of Life's Critical Situations Need Not After All Respond In One Of The Traditional Ways. No. One May Simply Default. Pass. Do As One Pleases, Shrug, Turn On One's Heel And Leave. Exit. Why After All Need One Act Humanly?

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What Nuns Don't Realize Is That They Look Better In Nun Clothes Than J.c. Penney Pantsuits.

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Old Neighborhood

A Repetition Is The Re-enactment Of Past Experience Toward The End Of Isolating The Time Segment Which Has Lapsed In Order That It, The Lapsed Time, Can Be Savored Of Itself And Without The Usual Adulteration Of Events That Clog Time Like Peanuts In Brittle.

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Knowing The Truth

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Why Is It That One Can Look At A Lion Or A Planet Or An Owl Or At Someone's Finger As Long As One Pleases, But Looking Into The Eyes Of Another Person Is, If Prolonged Past A Second, A Perilous Affair?

To Become Aware Of The Possibility Of The Search Is To Be Onto Something.

Before, I Wandered As A Diversion. Now I Wander Seriously And Sit And Read As A Diversion.

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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 Is It That No Other Species But Man Gets Bored? Under The Circumstances In Which A Man Gets Bored, A Dog Goes To Sleep.

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I Had Discovered That A Person Does Not Have To Be This Or Be That Or Be Anything, Not Even Oneself. One Is Free.

Since Grief Only Aggravates Your Loss, Grieve Not For What Is Past.

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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.

[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 He Knows, So That In The Action Of Communication He Experiences A Recognition, A Feeling That He Has Been There Before, A Shock Of Recognition.

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It Makes People Nervous For One To Step Out Of One's Role.

Lucky Is The Man Who Does Not Secretly Believe That Every Possibility Is Open To Him.

Being Uneducated Is No Guarantee Against Being Obnoxious.

Peace Is Only Better Than War When It's Not Hell Too. War Being Hell Makes Sense.

Fiction Doesn’t Tell Us Something We Don’t Know, It Tells Us Something We Know But Don’t Know That We Know.

Bad Books Always Lie. They Lie Most Of All About The Human Condition.

Human Condition

Jews Wait For The Lord, Protestants Sing Hymns To Him, Catholics Say Mass And Eat Him.

Where There Is Chance Of Gain, There Is Also Chance Of Loss. Whenever One Courts Great Happiness, One Also Risks Malaise.

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.

As For Hobbies, People With Stimulating Hobbies Suffer From The Most Noxious Of Despairs Since They Are Tranquilized In Their Despair.

Nobody But A Southerner Knows The Wrenching Rinsing Sadness Of The Cities Of The North.

Losing Hope Is Not So Bad. There's Something Worse: Losing Hope And Hiding It From Yourself.

Why Did God Make Woman So Beautiful And Man With Such A Loving Heart?

If Poets Often Commit Suicide, It Is Not Because Their Poems Are Bad But Because They Are Good. Whoever Heard Of A Bad Poet Committing Suicide? The Reader Is Only A Little Better Off. The Exhilaration Of A Good Poem Lasts Twenty Minutes, An Hour At Most. Unlike The Scientist, The Artist Has Reentry Problems That Are Frequent And Catastrophic.

One Of The Peculiar Ironies Of Being A Human Self In The Cosmos: A Stranger Approaching You In The Street Will In A Second's Glance See You Whole, Size You Up, Place You In A Way In Which You Cannot And Never Will, Even Though You Have Spent A Lifetime With Yourself, Live In The Century Of The Self, And Therefore Ought To Know Yourself Best Of All.

We Love Those Who Know The Worst Of Us And Don't Turn Their Face Away.

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