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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

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.
PAT CONROY

Born Carolina Carry Sunshine Country Dark Gold Ink Island Low Raised Sea
But no one walks out of his family without reprisals: a family is too disciplined an army to offer compassion to its deserters.
PAT CONROY

Army Compassion Deserter Discipline Family Offer Out Reprisal Walk
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
Honor is the presence of God in man.
PAT CONROY

God Honor Man Presence
Faulkner 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
PAT CONROY

Country Courage First Necessary People Person Revolutionary Step Themselves
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
I’ve always found paranoia to be a perfectly defensible position.
PAT CONROY

Always Defensible Found Paranoia Perfectly Position
Love’s action. It isn’t talk and it never has been.
PAT CONROY

Action Beem Love never Talk
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.
PAT CONROY

Anyone Genuine Greatest Hero Know Must Need Symoatheic Understand Well
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
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 CONROY

Always Am Been Go Happier Have Know Somewhere Want Where
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
Each of us would remember that all during our lives. It was the purest moment of freedom and headlong exhilaration that I had ever felt. A wordless covenant was set, and I would go back in my imagination, and return to where happiness seemed so easy to touch.
PAT CONROY

During Easy Exhilaration Freedom Happiness Imagination Moment Remember Seem Wordless
The English language on her tongue became a smoke-screen, without her eyes changing expression in the least.
PAT CONROY

Become Change English Expression Eye Language Least Smokescreen Tongue
Walking the streets of Charleston in the late afternoons of August was like walking through gauze or inhaling damaged silk.
PAT CONROY

Afternoon August Damage Gauze Inghail Later People Person Silk Street Though Walk
Evil would always come to me disguised in systems and dignified by law.
PAT CONROY

Always Come Dignified Disguise Evil Law System

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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