Walker Percy Quotes

What is fright by night is curiosity by day.

Reading was the only amusement I allowed myself

Things don't change. You change your way of looking, that's all

Light changes, our eyes blink and see the world from the slightest difference of perspective and our place in it has changed.

Travel is not really about leaving our homes, but leaving our habits.

I sing the joy of wandering and the pleasure of the wanderer's death

When I was a child, I thought of my Delta town as the center of the universe, but now I realize how little I know about the universe. As a child, I thought I was immortal, but now I recognize how limited a time we all have. As a child, success meant scoring A on every exam, but now I take it to mean good health, close family and friends, achieve- ments in my work, and helping others.

The only true voyage of discovery, . . . would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes.

...there is a celebrated aphorism insisting that the best way to live is to 'work like you don't need the money, dance like nobody is watching, and love like you've never been hurt.'...After years of hearing and reading these lines I have decided to tell the truth: the original version is wrong. There is a grave error in the wording of this adage. The correct version should go as follows: Love like you don't need the money, Work like nobody is watching, Dance like you've never been hurt. See? Doesn't that make more sense?

Your initial opinion on just about anything may change over time.

For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived.

Let us assume that entertainment is the sole end of reading; even so I think you would hold that no mental employment is so broadening to the sympathies or so enlightening to the understanding. Other pursuits belong not to all times, all ages, all conditions; but this gives stimulus to our youth and diversion to our old age; this adds a charm to success, and offers a haven of consolation to failure. Through the night-watches, on all our journeyings, and in our hours of ease, it is our unfailing companion.

My career is going better now than when I was younger. Now I get the part. Back then, I'd get the girl.

We travel because we need to, because distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything. Several new science papers suggest that getting away is an essential habit of effective thinking. When we escape from the place we spend most of our time, the mind is suddenly made aware of all those errant ideas we'd previously suppressed. We start thinking about obscure possibilitiebsthat never would have occurred to us if we'd stayed home.

All change brings bad things and good things to replace the bad and good things that were before. It is natural to look back and say it was better before—but that does not make it true. Different is not worse. It is just different.

It's important not to take yourself too seriously, ... and I think sometimes people take us a lot more seriously than we take ourselves, especially when it comes to politics. Politics, for me, is a reflection of the world I live in. But love is just as important as politics to me. They both exist in the world, you know? And if you don't reflect the entire world around you, then you're leaving something out.

Reading is like travel, allowing you to exit your own life for a bit, and to come back with a renewed, even inspired, perspective.

The essence of sports is that while you're doing it, nothing else matters, but after you stop, there is a place, generally not very important, where you would put it.

You can still do all the same things. How you do them is what will shift.

Those who are serious in ridiculous matters will be ridiculous in serious matters.

Reading dreams. That's what started her walking down the road. Every day she'd walk a little further: a mile, and come home. Two miles, and come home. One day she just kept on.

Instead of insight, maybe all a man gets is strength to wander for a while.

What seems so necessary today may not even be desirable tomorrow.

Nothing has changed but my attitude, therefore, everything has changed.

My father died shortly after I was twenty-one; and being left well off, and having a taste for travel and adventure, I resigned, for a time, all pursuit of the almighty dollar, and became a desultory wanderer over the face of the earth.