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One of the greatest gifts you can get as a writer is to be born into an unhappy family.

Pat Conroy

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
It’s impossible to explain to a Yankee what `tacky’ is. They simply have no word for it up north, but my God, do they ever need one.
PAT CONROY

Ever Explain God Impossible Need North Simply Tacky Word
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
Silence (can) be the most eloquent form of lying.
PAT CONROY

Eloquent Lie Most Silence
Love’s action. It isn’t talk and it never has been.
PAT CONROY

Action Beem Love never Talk
Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.
PAT CONROY

Explain Have Life Myself Only Write
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
The Storied South , is a love song to the South Bill helped illuminate. It’s a crowning achievement of his own storied career.
PAT CONROY

Achievement Career Help Illuminate Song South Story
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
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
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
A library could show you everything if you knew where to look.
PAT CONROY

Everything Knew Library Look Show
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
If the writing is good, then the result seems effortless and inevitable. But when you want to say something life-changing or ineffable in a single sentence, you face both the limitations of the sentence itself and the extent of your own talent.
PAT CONROY

Effortless Extech Ineffable Limitation Own Result Sentence Something Talent Want
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
In Charleston, more than elsewhere, you get the feeling that the twentieth century is a vast, unconscionable mistake.
PAT CONROY

Century Elsewhere Feel Mistake More People Person Twethies Unconciousable Vast

One of the greatest gifts you can get as a writer is to be born into an unhappy family.

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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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