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The most powerful words in English are, ‘Tell me a story.’

Pat Conroy

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
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
There is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss.
PAT CONROY

Discriminating Loss More No Teacher Transform
Without music, life is a journey through a desert.
PAT CONROY

Desert Journey Life Music Through Without
Teach them the quiet words of kindness, to live beyond themselves.
PAT CONROY

Beyond Kindness Live Quiet Teach Them Themselves Word
There 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 CONROY

Beauty Burden Crippling Dangerous More Much Often Such Thing Too Woman
The University of South Carolina has always played a role in my life and the intellectual life of South Carolina.
PAT CONROY

Always Country Intellectual Life Play Role South University
I stood face to face with the moon and the ocean and the future that spread out with all its bewildering immensity before me.
PAT CONROY

Before Bewilder Face Future Immensity Moon Ocean Spread Stood
Except for memory, time would have no meaning at all.
PAT CONROY

All Except Meaning Memory No Time
Humanity is best described as inhumanity.
PAT CONROY

Best Describe Humanity Inhumanity
The great teachers fill you up with hope and shower you with a thousand reasons to embrace all aspects of life.
PAT CONROY

Aspect Embrace Fill Great Hope Life Reason Shower Teacher Thousand
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
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
You can be moved profoundly by other vistas, by other oceans, by soaring mountain ranges, but you can never be seduced. You can even forsake the lowcountry, renounce it for other climates, but you can never completely escape the sensuous, semitropical pull of Charleston and her marshes.
PAT CONROY

Climate Escape Mountain Move Ocean Other Profound Renounce Way
One of the greatest gifts you can get as a writer is to be born into an unhappy family.
PAT CONROY

Born Family Get Gift Greatest One Unhappy Writer

The most powerful words in English are, ‘Tell me a story.’

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The most powerful words in English are, ‘Tell me a story.’

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