# Quote — William Alexander Percy, Lanterns On The Levee

> What I wrote seemed to me more essentially myself than anything I did or said. It often gushed up almost involuntarily like automatic writing, and the difficulty lay in keeping the hot gush continuous and unselfconscious while at the same time directing it with cold intellect into form. I never could write in cold blood. The results were intensely personal, whatever their other defects. (Ch. 12, on writing poetry)

- Author: [William Alexander Percy](https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-alexander-percy.md)
- Book: [Lanterns On The Levee](https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-alexander-percy/lanterns-on-the-levee.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Alexander_Percy#Lanterns_on_the_Levee_(1941)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-alexander-percy/lanterns-on-the-levee/what-i-wrote

## More from this book

> Honor and honesty, compassion and truth are good even if they kill you, for they alone give life its dignity and worth. (Ch. 24)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-alexander-percy/lanterns-on-the-levee/honor-and-honesty.md)

> Our woods are not made for walking because the vines and bushes are too rampant and the rattlesnakes too much at home. But the high levee is perfect for a stroll, which you can extend, if so minded, a hundred miles in either direction. (Ch. 12, on Greenville, Mississippi)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-alexander-percy/lanterns-on-the-levee/our-woods-are.md)

> That short period of my life spent in the line is the only one I remember step by step – as if it moved sub specie aeternitatis. Not that I enjoyed it; I hated it. Not that I was fitted for it by temperament or ability, I was desperately unfitted; but it, somehow, had meaning, and daily life hasn't: it was part of a common endeavor, and daily life is isolated and lonely. (Ch. 17, on his service on the Western Front in World War I)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-alexander-percy/lanterns-on-the-levee/that-short-period.md)