black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

Pat Conroy

Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.
PAT CONROY

Explain Have Life Myself Only Write
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
The great teachers fill you up with hope and shower you with a thousand reasons to embrace all aspects of life.
PAT CONROY

Aspect Embrace Fill Great Hope Life Reason Shower Teacher Thousand
Once I had told her that I would rather see a museum bombed than a book underlined, but she dismissed my argument as mere sentimentality. She marked her books so that stunning images and ideas would not be lost to her.
PAT CONROY

Argument Bomb Dismiss Image Museum Once Sentimentality Stunning Told Underline
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
South Carolina is not a state; it is a cult.
PAT CONROY

Cult South State
Good coaching is good teaching and nothing else.
PAT CONROY

Coach Else Good Nothing Teach
William Ferris has long reigned as the unimpeachable source of the entire southern experience. His work on southern folklore and the composition of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture have made him both legendary and necessary. His book,
PAT CONROY

Country Entire Experience Long People Person Resigned Source Southern Unimpeachable
The great teachers fill you up with hope and shower you with a thousand reasons to embrace all aspects of life. I wanted to follow Mr. Monte around for the rest of my life, learning everything he wished to share of impart, but I didn’t know how to ask.
PAT CONROY

Aspect Embrace Fill Great Hope Life Reason Shower Teacher Thousand
I stood face to face with the moon and the ocean and the future that spread out with all its bewildering immensity before me.
PAT CONROY

Before Bewilder Face Future Immensity Moon Ocean Spread Stood
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
My attraction to story is a ceaseless current that runs through the center of me. My inexhaustible ardor for reading seems connected to my hunger for storylines that show up in both books and in the great tumbling chaos of life.
PAT CONROY

Attraction Ceaseless Center Current Run Story
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
Honor is the presence of God in man.
PAT CONROY

God Honor Man Presence
Then, too, I want a book so filled with story and character that I read page after page without thinking of food or drink because a writer has possessed me, crazed with an unappeasable thirst to know what happens next.
PAT CONROY

Character Fill Food Happen Page Think Unappealable 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

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Pat Conroy Quotes