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I don’t know why it is that I have always been happier thinking of somewhere I have been or wanted to go, than where I am at the time. I find it difficult to be happy in the present.

Pat Conroy

There are no ideas in the South, just barbecue.
PAT CONROY

Barbecue Idea Just No South
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
The English language on her tongue became a smoke-screen, without her eyes changing expression in the least.
PAT CONROY

Become Change English Expression Eye Language Least Smokescreen Tongue
Each of us would remember that all during our lives. It was the purest moment of freedom and headlong exhilaration that I had ever felt. A wordless covenant was set, and I would go back in my imagination, and return to where happiness seemed so easy to touch.
PAT CONROY

During Easy Exhilaration Freedom Happiness Imagination Moment Remember Seem Wordless
You do not learn how to write novels in a writing program. You learn how by leading an interesting life. Open yourself up to all experience. Let life pour through you the way light pours through leaves.
PAT CONROY

Interesting Learn Life Novel Program Write
Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.
PAT CONROY

Explain Have Life Myself Only Write
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
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

Age Could Early Knew More never One Prison South Southern Them Fragrant
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
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
My mother, Southern to the bone, once told me, “All Southern literature can be summed up in these words: ‘On the night the hogs ate Willie, Mama died when she heard what Daddy did to Sister.’” She raised me up to be a Southern writer, but it wasn’t easy.
PAT CONROY

Bone Literature Me Mother Once Southern Summed Told Word
I can’t pass a bookstore without slipping inside, looking for the next book that will burn my hand when I touch its jacket, or hand me over a promissory note of such immense power that it contains the formula that will change everything about me.
PAT CONROY

Book Bookstore Burn Hand Inside Jacket Lock Next Pass Touch When Without
One can learn anything, anything at all, I thought, if provided by a gifted and passionate teacher.
PAT CONROY

All Anything Can Gifted Learn One Passionate Teacher Thought
Happiness is an accident of nature, a beautiful and flawless aberration.
PAT CONROY

Aberration Accident Bature Beautiful Flawless Happiness
A recipe is a story that ends with a good meal.
PAT CONROY

End Good Meal Recipe Story
The most powerful words in English are, ‘Tell me a story.’
PAT CONROY

English Most Powerful Story Tell World

I don’t know why it is that I have always been happier thinking of somewhere I have been or wanted to go, than where I am at the time. I find it difficult to be happy in the present.

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I don’t know why it is that I have always been happier thinking of somewhere I have been or wanted to go, than where I am at the time. I find it difficult to be happy in the present.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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