I could bear the memory, but I could not bear the music that made the memory such a killing thing.
PAT CONROYI would always be a better hater of things and institutions than a lover of them.
More Pat Conroy Quotes
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There are no ideas in the South, just barbecue.
PAT CONROY -
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 -
I loved my parents… but that can never change the fact that my father’s violence ruined my childhood.
PAT CONROY -
She was one of those Southerners who knew from an early age that the South could never be more for them than a fragrant prison, administered by a collective of loving but treacherous relatives.
PAT CONROY -
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 -
I would always be a better hater of things and institutions than a lover of them.
PAT CONROY -
Man wonders but God decides When to kill the Prince of Tides.
PAT CONROY -
Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.
PAT CONROY -
I was born into the century in which novels lost their stories, poems their rhymes, paintings their form, and music its beauty, but that does not mean I had to like that trend or go along with it. I fight against these movements with every book I write.
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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 -
There is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss.
PAT CONROY -
I prayed hard and only gradually became aware that this fierce praying was a way of finding prologue and entrance into my own writing. This came as both astonishment and relief. When I thought God had abandoned me,
PAT CONROY -
Rape is a crime against sleep and memory; it’s afterimage imprints itself like an irreversible negative from the camera obscura of dreams.
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My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call.
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Losing prepares you for the heartbreak, setback, and the tragedy that you will encounter in the world more than winning ever can. By licking your wounds you learn how to avoid getting wounded the next time.
PAT CONROY