Walker Percy Quotes

I, at the age of 17 or 18 as a medical student, suddenly came up against a problem: 'What am I? What is the meaning of my existence as I experience it?'

People know they are lacking something, they are constantly wanting some kind of spiritual guidance.

I consider myself a spiritual atheist. I certainly believe there are forces bigger than ourselves, and that we should be searching, individually, for meaning in our lives. But I don't believe there's a supreme being, an intelligence that created everything.

I'm always searching. It's the reason I'm here. It's not really about music: it's about searching for meaning.

When I first started writing music, it was to express that. I was trying to find God and trying to find meaning in my life. That's what my music was about. It wasn't to entertain.

I came to the conclusion that unless I found myself and became the change I wanted to see in the world - as Gandhi said - I couldn't contribute much, nor would there be anything fulfilling or meaningful in my life. So I went on a spiritual search.

Every character is asking: 'What's my place? Why am I here? I don't want the answer to be 'Just because.' You find your own purpose. Each finds the reason to be here and how to contribute.

The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning - in other words, of absurdity - the more energetically meaning is sought.

I don't think things happen for a reason, but I think it's perfectly possible to experience life meaningfully.

When people know they are created with a purpose, and not here by accident, it is life-changing.

For this is the journey that men and women make, to find themselves. If they fail in this, it doesn't matter much else what they find.

No one who has lived even for a fleeting moment for something other than life in its conventional sense and has experienced the exaltation that this feeling produces can then renounce his new freedom so easily.

I want to tell people how to live spiritually. After you've bought all your houses and your clothes, you want something bigger.

If I'm not a successful human being, who I am?

I am waiting for a sign that will indicate to me what meaning I must give to my life, but right now my existence is satisfactory.

There are people who are seekers and people who aren't.

A life lived unexplored is a life not worth living.

I've always been searching. What am I going to do with all this - searching for that place where I could be me.

You have a generation that is saying we are tapping out of religion in many ways. But what they are not saying is that we are tapping out of a serious search for meaning in life.

God puts certain things in certain people. I'm a restless soul. I'm always searching. I'm always pressing to find what truth is and what life is all about.

I was experiencing all the success the entertainment industry has to offer, but I knew there had to be something more. It was sort of through that God prepared me to hear about His great plan.

Millions of people live their entire lives without finding themselves. But it is something I must do.

Sometimes it takes a brush with eternity - a crash, an illness, some shock to the system - to get you really thinking about what you want to do with your limited time here, and why you're living on this wobbling dirt clod in the first place.

Man - a being in search of meaning.

If you sense there must be more, there is more.