Walker Percy Quotes

The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.

The difference between being able to understand something and inventing it in the first place... is called genius.

To see things in the seed, that is genius.

The element of truth in the concept of genius is to be sought in the object, in what is open, not confined by repetition.

I have been speculating last night what makes a man a discoverer of undiscovered things; and a most perplexing problem it is. Many men who are very clever - much cleverer than the discoverers - never originate anything.

Genius: The capacity to see and to express what is simple, simply!

There is no need to create. Genius comes only to those who know how to use their eyes and their intelligence.

Genius is rarely able to give any account of its own processes.

It is the function of creative man to perceive and to connect the seemingly unconnected.

Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

People have laughed at all great inventors and discoverers.

Steve Jobs was Galileo in a past life. Discovery was instinctual for him.

People may say that what I do is very clever, but it's not really at all. It's not Swift.

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

I'm more interested in what I discover than what I invent.

Every great inspiration is but an experiment - though every experiment we know, is not a great inspiration.

To be creative means to connect. It's to abolish the gap between the body, the mind and the soul, between science and art, between fiction and nonfiction.

It is sometimes said that the major discoveries have already been made and that there is nothing important left to find. This attitude is altogether too pessimistic. There are plenty of ideas and plenty of things left to discover. The trick is to find the right path from one to the other.

It's not that complicated. If you hear something and it makes you want to hear it again, that's the ticket. You have to be lucky enough to find geniuses, welcome them and get out of their way.

Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.

The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.

Genius ain't anything more than elegant common sense.

I don't analyze what I'm doing. I've read convincing interpretations of my work, and sometimes I've noticed something that I wasn't aware of, but I think, at this point, people read into my work out of habit. Or I'm just very, very smart.