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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

Her library would have been valuable to a bibliophile except she treated her books execrably. I would rarely open a volume that she had not desecrated by underlining her favorite sections with a ball-point pen.
PAT CONROY

Been Bibliophile Book Except Execrably Library Treated Vlaueble
Good coaching is good teaching and nothing else.
PAT CONROY

Coach Else Good Nothing Teach
My soul found ease and rest in the companionship of books.
PAT CONROY

Book Companionship Ease Found Rest Soul
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
A library could show you everything if you knew where to look.
PAT CONROY

Everything Knew Library Look Show
Man wonders but God decides When to kill the Prince of Tides.
PAT CONROY

Decide God Kill Man Prince Tide Wonder
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
A story is a living thing, it moves and shifts.
PAT CONROY

Live Movem Shift Story Thing
We, men, die because our faces were not watered enough.
PAT CONROY

Die Enough Facemweer Men Water
One can learn anything, anything at all, I thought, if provided by a gifted and passionate teacher.
PAT CONROY

All Anything Can Gifted Learn One Passionate Teacher Thought
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
Cameras are a lifesaver for very shy people who have nowhere else to hide. Behind a lens they can disguise the fact that they have nothing to say to strangers.
PAT CONROY

Camera Else Hide Lifesaver Nowhere People Shy Very
I would always be a better hater of things and institutions than a lover of them.
PAT CONROY

Always Better Hater Institution Lover Thing Would
I prayed hard and only gradually became aware that this fierce praying was a way of finding prologue and entrance into my own writing. This came as both astonishment and relief. When I thought God had abandoned me,
PAT CONROY

Aware Entrance Fierce Find Gradual Hard Only Own Pray Prologue
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 mind is an intricate mechanism that can be run on the fuels of both victory and defeatism.
PAT CONROY

Both Defeatism Fuel Intricate Mechanism Mind Run Victory

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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