Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Walker Percy

Quote by Walker Percy

“Why is it that the look of another person looking at you is different from everything else in the Cosmos? That is to say, looking at lions or tigers or Saturn or the Ring Nebula or at an owl or at another person from the side is one thing, but finding yourself looking in the eyes of another person looking at you is something else. And 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?”

Quote by Walker Percy

Work

Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book

This book combines humor and introspection to delve into the vastness of the cosmos and the complexities of the human condition. It employs self-help tropes and concepts to examine life's big questions, offering a unique and thought-provoking perspective on existence. more

Author

Walker Percy
Walker Percy

Walker Percy was an American author known for his philosophical novels, which often explore themes of human existence, religious faith, and the absurdity of modern life. He was born on May 28, 1916, and passed away on May 10, 1990. more

You May Also Like

“She doesn't care about social hierarchies, or social etiquette. If she disagrees with you, your friends or your family, you're likely to hear about it.”

“Fitchett smiled to himself. He loved this bit, when it’s about to kick off. Half terror, half ecstasy. The adrenaline surging through him like an electric current. His breathing coming in short gasps and his stomach trying to push its way up through his throat. ‘The Buzz’ they called it. And they were right. Fitchett was buzzing, this was what it was all about for him. This blast of magic.”

“He [Wallace] sent a quick note to his friend [Franzen] explaining his behavior. "the bold fact is that I'm a little afraid of you right now,"[...] "all I can tell you is that I may have been that [a worthy opponent] for you a couple/ three years ago, and maybe 16 months or tow or 5 or 10 years hence, but right now I am a pathetic and very confused man, a failed writer at 28, who is so jealous, so sickly searing envious of you and Vollmann and Mark Leyner and even David Fuckward Leavitt and any young man who is right now producing pages with which he can live and even approving them off some base-clause of conviction about the entrprise's meaning and end that I consider suicide a reasonable- if not at this point a desirable- option with respect to the whole wretched problem.”

“I was in full digression! far from the subject!...my colonel was losing track...rapidly, of my story! my story!...my own story!...the gifts that I had personally received from Heaven!...yet I had insisted, every time! truly extraordinary gifts!...I'd made him repeat them a hundred times!...enough so he'd remember! that I was the only true genius! the century's only writer! the proof: that no one ever spoke of me!...everyone was jealous! Nobel! no Nobel! they had all joined forces to have me executed!...they could just go fuck off!...drop dead! since it was a question of death between me and them! I'll send their readers packing! all their readers! I'll make the public grow sick of their books! cabal! no cabal! since there was no room for two styles!...it was mine or theirs!...crawl or breastroke!...you understand!...the only inventor of the century! is me! me! me right here! the only genius, you might say! damned or not!...”