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I discovered that He had simply given me a different voice to praise the inexhaustible beauty of the made world.

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

Always Anyone Can Children Mama Pretty Talk Taught Wor
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
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
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
I do not have any other way of saying it. I think it happens but once and only to the very young when it feels like your skin could ignite at the mere touch of another person. You get to love like that but once.
PAT CONROY

Any Feel Happen Once Only Other Say Skin Think Way When Young
Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends.
PAT CONROY

End never Once Travel Voyage
But even her demons she invested with inordinate beauty, consecrated them with the dignity of her attention.
PAT CONROY

Attention Beauty Consecrate Democrats Dignity Even Inordinate Invest She
Do you think that Hemingway knew he was a writer at twenty years old? No, he did not. Or Fitzgerald, or Wolfe. This is a difficult concept to grasp. Hemingway didn’t know he was Ernest Hemingway when he was a young man.
PAT CONROY

Country Do Hemingway Knew Old People Person Think Writer Year
Then another porpoise broke the water and rolled toward us. A third and fourth porpoise neared. The visitation was something so rare and perfect that we knew by instinct not to speak-and then as quickly as they had come, the porpoises moved away from us…
PAT CONROY

Another Btole Water Fourth Near Porpoise Roll Third Toward Us
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
My soul grazes like a lamb on the beauty of an indrawn tide.
PAT CONROY

Beauty Graze Indrawn Lamb Source Tide
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
Evil would always come to me disguised in systems and dignified by law.
PAT CONROY

Always Come Dignified Disguise Evil Law System
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
A story is a living thing, it moves and shifts.
PAT CONROY

Live Movem Shift Story Thing
I have heard it said that an inoculation to the sights and smells of the Carolina lowcountry is an almost irreversible antidote to the charms of other landscapes, other alien geographies.
PAT CONROY

Alien Charm Geographic Heard Inoculation Landscape Sight Smell
Happiness is an accident of nature, a beautiful and flawless aberration.
PAT CONROY

Aberration Accident Bature Beautiful Flawless Happiness
I could bear the memory, but I could not bear the music that made the memory such a killing thing.
PAT CONROY

Bear Could Could Music Kill Made Memory Such Thing
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
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
Good writing … involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear.
PAT CONROY

Agony Difficult Fit Force Good Human Into Kucid Profound Thought Tight Write
I loved my parents… but that can never change the fact that my father’s violence ruined my childhood.
PAT CONROY

Change Childhood Fact Father Love never Parent Run Violence
Put me into a crusader’s armor, a cardinal’s vestments. Let me feel the pygmy’s heartbeat, the queen’s breast, the torturer’s pleasure, the Nile’s taste, or the nomad’s thirst.
PAT CONROY

Amor Feel Let Pleasure Put Queen Taste Torture
Political correctness has a stranglehold on academia, on feminism, and on the media. It is a form of both madness and maggotry, and has already silenced the voices of writers like James Dicky across the land.
PAT CONROY

Across Already Correctness Land Madness Maggotry Medis Political Stranglehold
A library could show you everything if you knew where to look.
PAT CONROY

Everything Knew Library Look Show
There is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss.
PAT CONROY

Discriminating Loss More No Teacher Transform
Man wonders but God decides When to kill the Prince of Tides.
PAT CONROY

Decide God Kill Man Prince Tide Wonder

I discovered that He had simply given me a different voice to praise the inexhaustible beauty of the made world.

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I discovered that He had simply given me a different voice to praise the inexhaustible beauty of the made world.

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