She 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 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 CONROYWalking the streets of Charleston in the late afternoons of August was like walking through gauze or inhaling damaged silk.
PAT CONROYMy soul grazes like a lamb on the beauty of an indrawn tide.
PAT CONROYShe was one of those Southerners who knew from an early age that the South could never be more for them than a fragrant prison, administered by a collective of loving but treacherous relatives.
PAT CONROYCharleston has a landscape that encourages intimacy and partisanship.
PAT CONROYExcept for memory, time would have no meaning at all.
PAT CONROYThe University of South Carolina has always played a role in my life and the intellectual life of South Carolina.
PAT CONROYEach divorce is the death of a small civilization.
PAT CONROYI 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 CONROYI’ve always believed that dreams were both the love letters and the hate mail of the subconscious.
PAT CONROYThe most powerful words in English are ‘Tell me a story,’ words that are intimately related to the complexity of history, the origins of language, the continuity of the species, the taproot of our humanity, our singularity, and art itself.
PAT CONROYThe pursuit of greatness means that laziness has no place in your life.
PAT CONROYOnce you have traveled, the voyage never ends.
PAT CONROYThere’s no word in the language I revere more than ‘teacher.’ My heart sings when a kid refers to me as his teacher, and it always has. I’ve honored myself and the entire family of man by becoming a teacher.
PAT CONROYWhy 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 CONROYMama always taught her children that words were pretty, but anyone can talk. She said, pay attention to that man or woman who acted, who did, who performed. She taught us to trust in thing we could see, not that we heard.
PAT CONROY