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 CONROYFaulkner didn’t know he was William Faulkner. But they had to take the first step. They had to call themselves writers. That is the first revolutionary act a writer has to make. It takes courage. But it’s necessary
More Pat Conroy Quotes
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My soul found ease and rest in the companionship of books.
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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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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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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.
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Anyone who knows me well must understand and be sympathetic to my genuine need to be my own greatest hero. It is not a flaw of character; it is a catastrophe.
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Baseball fans love numbers. They love to swirl them around their mouths like Bordeaux wine.
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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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Except for memory, time would have no meaning at all.
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Charleston has a landscape that encourages intimacy and partisanship.
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Teach them the quiet words of kindness, to live beyond themselves.
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Walking the streets of Charleston in the late afternoons of August was like walking through gauze or inhaling damaged silk.
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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.
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But no one walks out of his family without reprisals: a family is too disciplined an army to offer compassion to its deserters.
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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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Good coaching is good teaching and nothing else.
PAT CONROY