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One of the greatest gifts you can get as a writer is to be born into an unhappy family.

Pat Conroy

I’ve always found paranoia to be a perfectly defensible position.
PAT CONROY

Always Defensible Found Paranoia Perfectly Position
Then, too, I want a book so filled with story and character that I read page after page without thinking of food or drink because a writer has possessed me, crazed with an unappeasable thirst to know what happens next.
PAT CONROY

Character Fill Food Happen Page Think Unappealable Want
Why do they not teach you that time is a finger snap and an eye blink, and that you should not allow a moment to pass you by without taking joyous, ecstatic note of it, not wasting a single moment of its swift, breakneck circuit?
PAT CONROY

Allow Blink Eye Finger Moment Pass Should Snap Teach Time
You can be moved profoundly by other vistas, by other oceans, by soaring mountain ranges, but you can never be seduced. You can even forsake the lowcountry, renounce it for other climates, but you can never completely escape the sensuous, semitropical pull of Charleston and her marshes.
PAT CONROY

Climate Escape Mountain Move Ocean Other Profound Renounce Way
There is such a thing as too much beauty in a woman and it is often a burden as crippling as homeliness and far more dangerous. It takes much luck and integrity to survive the gift of perfect beauty, and its impermanence is its most cunning betrayal.
PAT CONROY

Beauty Burden Crippling Dangerous More Much Often Such Thing Too Woman
Books are living things and their task lies in their vows of silence.
PAT CONROY

Book Lie Live Silence Tale Thing Vow
American men are allotted just as many tears as American women. But because we are forbidden to shed them.
PAT CONROY

Allowed Country Firbidenm Shed Just Tear Them Women
I wanted to become the seeker, the aroused and passionate explorer, and it was better to go at it knowing nothing at all, always choosing the unmarked bottle, always choosing your own unproven method, armed with nothing but faith and a belief in astonishment.
PAT CONROY

Always Arouse Become Better Explore Know Nothing Seeker Want
Each divorce is the death of a small civilization.
PAT CONROY

Civilization Death Each Divorce Smal
I was born and raised on a Carolina sea island and I carried the sunshine of the low-country, inked in dark gold, on my back and shoulders.
PAT CONROY

Born Carolina Carry Sunshine Country Dark Gold Ink Island Low Raised Sea
We die long before women do, with our hearts exploding or our blood pressure rising or our livers eaten away by alcohol because that lake of grief inside us has no outlet.
PAT CONROY

Alcohol Away Blood Exploit Heart Liver Eaten Outlet Pressure Sie Women
Good writing is the hardest form of thinking.
PAT CONROY

Good Hardest Think Write
Charleston has a landscape that encourages intimacy and partisanship.
PAT CONROY

Encourage Landscape Partisanship People Person
The most powerful words in English are ‘Tell me a story,’ words that are intimately related to the complexity of history, the origins of language, the continuity of the species, the taproot of our humanity, our singularity, and art itself.
PAT CONROY

Complexity English History Intimately Most Origin Powerful Relate Story Tell Word
She had so mastered the strategies of camouflage that her own history had seemed a series of well-placed mirrors that kept her hidden from herself.
PAT CONROY

Camouflage Her History Kept Master Mirror Own Pace Seem She Strategy Well
You touch them as they quiver with a divine pleasure. You read them and they fall asleep to happy dreams for the next 10 years. If you do them the favor of understanding them, of taking in their portions of grief and wisdom, then they settle down in contented residence in your heart.
PAT CONROY

Asleep Down Dream Grief Happy Kindness Portion Quicker Settle Touch Wisdom Word
When men talk about the agony of being men, they can never quite get away from the recurrent theme of self-pity.
PAT CONROY

Agony Away Being Mne Pity Quite Recurrent Self Take Theme
Mama always taught her children that words were pretty, but anyone can talk. She said, pay attention to that man or woman who acted, who did, who performed. She taught us to trust in thing we could see, not that we heard.
PAT CONROY

Always Anyone Can Children Mama Pretty Talk Taught Wor
Her library would have been valuable to a bibliophile except she treated her books execrably. I would rarely open a volume that she had not desecrated by underlining her favorite sections with a ball-point pen.
PAT CONROY

Been Bibliophile Book Except Execrably Library Treated Vlaueble
Music could ache and hurt, that beautiful music was a place a suffering man could hide.
PAT CONROY

Ache Beautiful Hide Hurt Man Music Place Suffer
I’d be a conservative if I’d never met any. They’re selfish, mean-spirited, egocentric, reactionary, and boring.
PAT CONROY

Any Bore Conservative Egocentric Mean never Reactionary Selfish Spirited
My attraction to story is a ceaseless current that runs through the center of me. My inexhaustible ardor for reading seems connected to my hunger for storylines that show up in both books and in the great tumbling chaos of life.
PAT CONROY

Attraction Ceaseless Center Current Run Story
I’ve never had anyone’s approval, so I’ve learned to live without it.
PAT CONROY

Anyone Approve Learn Live never Without
Teach them the quiet words of kindness, to live beyond themselves.
PAT CONROY

Beyond Kindness Live Quiet Teach Them Themselves Word
From the very beginning, I wrote to explain my own life to myself, and I invited any readers who chose to make the journey with me to join me on the high wire.
PAT CONROY

Beginning Chose Explain From Invite Journey Life Make Myself Own Reader Wrote
Anyone who knows me well must understand and be sympathetic to my genuine need to be my own greatest hero. It is not a flaw of character; it is a catastrophe.
PAT CONROY

Anyone Genuine Greatest Hero Know Must Need Symoatheic Understand Well
And when women talk about being women, they can never quite get away from the recurrent theme of blaming men.
PAT CONROY

Being Blame Get Men Quite Recurrent Talk Theme Way When Women

One of the greatest gifts you can get as a writer is to be born into an unhappy family.

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One of the greatest gifts you can get as a writer is to be born into an unhappy family.

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