When men talk about the agony of being men, they can never quite get away from the recurrent theme of self-pity.
PAT CONROYAnd when women talk about being women, they can never quite get away from the recurrent theme of blaming men.
More Pat Conroy Quotes
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Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.
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Men are prisoners of their genitalia and women are the keepers of the keys to paradise.
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American men are allotted just as many tears as American women. But because we are forbidden to shed them.
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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.
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South Carolina is not a state; it is a cult.
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Man wonders but God decides When to kill the Prince of Tides.
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Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends.
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In Charleston, more than elsewhere, you get the feeling that the twentieth century is a vast, unconscionable mistake.
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Honor is the presence of God in man.
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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.
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Like everything else, love’s not worth much without some action to back it up.
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I would always be a better hater of things and institutions than a lover of them.
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But even her demons she invested with inordinate beauty, consecrated them with the dignity of her attention.
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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.
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The University of South Carolina has always played a role in my life and the intellectual life of South Carolina.
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Here is all I ask of a book- give me everything. Everything, and don’t leave out a single word.
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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.
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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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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.
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The mind is an intricate mechanism that can be run on the fuels of both victory and defeatism.
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Urge them toward excellence, drive them toward gentleness, pull them deep into yourself, pull them upward toward manhood, but softly like an angel arranging clouds. Let your spirit move through them softly.
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Each divorce is the death of a small civilization.
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Teach them the quiet words of kindness, to live beyond themselves.
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I’d be a conservative if I’d never met any. They’re selfish, mean-spirited, egocentric, reactionary, and boring.
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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.
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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