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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

You touch them as they quiver with a divine pleasure. You read them and they fall asleep to happy dreams for the next 10 years. If you do them the favor of understanding them, of taking in their portions of grief and wisdom, then they settle down in contented residence in your heart.
PAT CONROY

Asleep Down Dream Grief Happy Kindness Portion Quicker Settle Touch Wisdom Word
Put me into a crusader’s armor, a cardinal’s vestments. Let me feel the pygmy’s heartbeat, the queen’s breast, the torturer’s pleasure, the Nile’s taste, or the nomad’s thirst.
PAT CONROY

Amor Feel Let Pleasure Put Queen Taste Torture
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
A story is a living thing, it moves and shifts.
PAT CONROY

Live Movem Shift Story Thing
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
I can’t pass a bookstore without slipping inside, looking for the next book that will burn my hand when I touch its jacket, or hand me over a promissory note of such immense power that it contains the formula that will change everything about me.
PAT CONROY

Book Bookstore Burn Hand Inside Jacket Lock Next Pass Touch When Without
Like everything else, love’s not worth much without some action to back it up.
PAT CONROY

Action Back Else Everything Life Love Some Up Worth
Charleston has a landscape that encourages intimacy and partisanship.
PAT CONROY

Encourage Landscape Partisanship People Person
The most powerful words in English are, ‘Tell me a story.’
PAT CONROY

English Most Powerful Story Tell World
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
Without music, life is a journey through a desert.
PAT CONROY

Desert Journey Life Music Through Without
Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.
PAT CONROY

Explain Have Life Myself Only Write
Tell me everything that I must know. Hold nothing back.
PAT CONROY

Back Everything Know Must Nothing Tell
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

Country Do Hemingway Knew Old People Person Think Writer Year
Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.
PAT CONROY

Again Chamber End never Once Over Play Quester Travel Voyage

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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