"Bourbon does for me what the piece of cake did for Proust."
"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."
28 likes
Source: Walker Percy (2011). “Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book”, p.53, Open Road Media
About the author
Same author
More quotes by Walker Percy
"You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing."
"Where there is chance of gain, there is also chance of loss. Whenever one courts great happiness, one also risks malaise."
"To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something."
"In this world goodness is destined to be defeated. But a man must go down fighting. That is the victory. To do anything less is to be less than a man."
"How did it happen that now he could see everything so clearly. Something had given him leave to live in the present. Not once in his entire life had he come to rest in the quiet center of himself but had forever cast himself from some dark past he could not remember to a future that did not exist. Not once had he been present for his life. So his life had passed like a dream. Is it possible for people to miss their lives the way one can miss a plane?"