Except for memory, time would have no meaning at all.
PAT CONROYExcept for memory, time would have no meaning at all.
PAT CONROYThen another porpoise broke the water and rolled toward us. A third and fourth porpoise neared. The visitation was something so rare and perfect that we knew by instinct not to speak-and then as quickly as they had come, the porpoises moved away from us…
PAT CONROYI 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 CONROYShe had so mastered the strategies of camouflage that her own history had seemed a series of well-placed mirrors that kept her hidden from herself.
PAT CONROYBooks are living things and their task lies in their vows of silence.
PAT CONROYThere is such a thing as too much beauty in a woman and it is often a burden as crippling as homeliness and far more dangerous. It takes much luck and integrity to survive the gift of perfect beauty, and its impermanence is its most cunning betrayal.
PAT CONROYI’ve always found paranoia to be a perfectly defensible position.
PAT CONROYRape is a crime against sleep and memory; it’s afterimage imprints itself like an irreversible negative from the camera obscura of dreams.
PAT CONROYA recipe is a story that ends with a good meal.
PAT CONROYIt’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 CONROYGood writing … involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear.
PAT CONROYHere’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 CONROYLike everything else, love’s not worth much without some action to back it up.
PAT CONROYMen are prisoners of their genitalia and women are the keepers of the keys to paradise.
PAT CONROYGood coaching is good teaching and nothing else.
PAT CONROYUrge 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.
PAT CONROY