“Why it is that of all the billions and billions of strange objects in the Cosmos — novas, quasars, pulsars, black holes — you are beyond doubt the strangest?”

—  Walker Percy

Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (1983)

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Walker Percy photo
Walker Percy 55
Southern philosophical novelist 1916–1990

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The Yale Book of Quotations cites a similar statement in The New York Times on Jan. 10, 1938: "Well, now, about this new budget. It’s a billion here and a billion there, and by and by it begins to mount up into money." https://books.google.com/books?id=ck6bXqt5shkC&lpg=PP1&dq=%22fred%20r.%20shapiro%22%20yale%20book%20of%20quotations&pg=PA206#v=onepage&q=%22everett%20m.%20dirksen%22&f=false
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