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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

Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It 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 CONROY

Agony Difficult Force Form Good Hardest Involves Lucid Profoundly Think Writing
One does not know where love will take you.
PAT CONROY

Know Love One Does Take
Laughter is the only strategy that has ever worked at all for me when my world is falling apart.
PAT CONROY

All Apart Fall Laughter Strategy Work World
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
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
A recipe is a story that ends with a good meal.
PAT CONROY

End Good Meal Recipe Story
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
Why do they not teach you that time is a finger snap and an eye blink, and that you should not allow a moment to pass you by without taking joyous, ecstatic note of it, not wasting a single moment of its swift, breakneck circuit?
PAT CONROY

Allow Blink Eye Finger Moment Pass Should Snap Teach Time
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
The safe places could only be visited; they could only grant a momentary intuition of sanctuary. The moment always came when we had to return to our real life to face the wounds and grief indigenous to our homr by the river.
PAT CONROY

Could Grant Intuition Momentary Only Place Safe Sanctuary Vist
Charleston has a landscape that encourages intimacy and partisanship.
PAT CONROY

Encourage Landscape Partisanship People Person
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
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
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.
PAT CONROY

Interesting Learn Life Novel Program Write
Humanity is best described as inhumanity.
PAT CONROY

Best Describe Humanity Inhumanity
A story is a living thing, it moves and shifts.
PAT CONROY

Live Movem Shift Story Thing

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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