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Red Hook Road made me happy, and happy to be alive. It took me out of my home on the coast of South Carolina, placed me in the town along Red hook Road, and changed me the way good books always do.

Pat Conroy

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
Here’s what I love: when a great writer turns me into a Jew from Chicago, a lesbian out of South Carolina, or a black woman moving into a subway entrance in Harlem. Turn me into something else, writers of the world. Make me Muslim, heretic, hermaphrodite.
PAT CONROY

Black Country Great Jew Lesbian Love Me Move South Turn Woman
No story is a straight line. The geometry of a human life is too imperfect and complex, too distorted by the laughter of time and the bewildering intricacies of fate to admit the straight line into its system of laws.
PAT CONROY

Distort Geometry Human Imperfect Laughter Life Line Story Straight Time
Every woman I had ever met who walked through the world appraised and classified by an extraordinary physicality had also received the keys to an unbearable solitude. It was the coefficient of their beauty, the price they had to pay.
PAT CONROY

Appraise Classified Ever Every Extraordinary Met Physicality Walk Woman World
I’ve always believed that dreams were both the love letters and the hate mail of the subconscious.
PAT CONROY

All Always Believe Both Dream Hate Letter Love Succoncious
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
Cameras are a lifesaver for very shy people who have nowhere else to hide. Behind a lens they can disguise the fact that they have nothing to say to strangers.
PAT CONROY

Camera Else Hide Lifesaver Nowhere People Shy Very
Without music, life is a journey through a desert.
PAT CONROY

Desert Journey Life Music Through Without
Men are prisoners of their genitalia and women are the keepers of the keys to paradise.
PAT CONROY

Genitalia Keeper Key Men Paradise Prisoner Women
It did not look like the work of God, but it might have represented the handicraft of a God with a joyous sense of humor, a dancing God who loved mischief as much as prayer, and playfulness as much as mischief.
PAT CONROY

God Handicraft Joyous Look Might Represent Sense Of Humour Work
Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.
PAT CONROY

Explain Have Life Myself Only Write
Happiness is an accident of nature, a beautiful and flawless aberration.
PAT CONROY

Aberration Accident Bature Beautiful Flawless Happiness
The University of South Carolina has always played a role in my life and the intellectual life of South Carolina.
PAT CONROY

Always Country Intellectual Life Play Role South University
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
Few things linger longer or become more indwelling than that feeling of both completion and emptiness when a great book ends. That the book accompanies the reader forever from that day forward is part of literature’s profligate generosity.
PAT CONROY

Book Both Competition Emptiness End Feel Few Thing Great Indwelling Linger Longer
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
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
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
A family is one of nature’s solubles; it dissolves in time like salt in rainwater.
PAT CONROY

Dissolve Family Nature One Rainwater Salt Soluble Time
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
Rape is a crime against sleep and memory; it’s afterimage imprints itself like an irreversible negative from the camera obscura of dreams.
PAT CONROY

Afterimage Camera Crime Against Imprint Irreversible Itself Memory Neagtaive Obscura Rape Sleep
Baseball fans love numbers. They love to swirl them around their mouths like Bordeaux wine.
PAT CONROY

Around Baseball Bordeaux Fan Love Mouth Number Swirl Wine
Like everything else, love’s not worth much without some action to back it up.
PAT CONROY

Action Back Else Everything Life Love Some Up Worth
One does not know where love will take you.
PAT CONROY

Know Love One Does Take
Walking the streets of Charleston in the late afternoons of August was like walking through gauze or inhaling damaged silk.
PAT CONROY

Afternoon August Damage Gauze Inghail Later People Person Silk Street Though Walk
I lived with the terrible knowledge that one day I would be an old man still waiting for my real life to start. Already, I pitied that old man.
PAT CONROY

Day Knowledge Life Live Man Old One Real Start Still Terrible Wait
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

Red Hook Road made me happy, and happy to be alive. It took me out of my home on the coast of South Carolina, placed me in the town along Red hook Road, and changed me the way good books always do.

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Red Hook Road made me happy, and happy to be alive. It took me out of my home on the coast of South Carolina, placed me in the town along Red hook Road, and changed me the way good books always do.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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