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South Carolina is not a state; it is a cult.

Pat Conroy

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
A story is a living thing, it moves and shifts.
PAT CONROY

Live Movem Shift Story Thing
Baseball fans love numbers. They love to swirl them around their mouths like Bordeaux wine.
PAT CONROY

Around Baseball Bordeaux Fan Love Mouth Number Swirl Wine
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 was born into the century in which novels lost their stories, poems their rhymes, paintings their form, and music its beauty, but that does not mean I had to like that trend or go along with it. I fight against these movements with every book I write.
PAT CONROY

Along Beauty Book Born Movement Music Painting Poem Rhyme Sory Write
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
I’ve never had anyone’s approval, so I’ve learned to live without it.
PAT CONROY

Anyone Approve Learn Live never Without
The 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 CONROY

Complexity English History Intimately Most Origin Powerful Relate Story Tell 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
Books are living things and their task lies in their vows of silence.
PAT CONROY

Book Lie Live Silence Tale Thing Vow
I could bear the memory, but I could not bear the music that made the memory such a killing thing.
PAT CONROY

Bear Could Could Music Kill Made Memory Such Thing
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
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
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
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
It’s impossible to explain to a Yankee what `tacky’ is. They simply have no word for it up north, but my God, do they ever need one.
PAT CONROY

Ever Explain God Impossible Need North Simply Tacky Word

South Carolina is not a state; it is a cult.

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South Carolina is not a state; it is a cult.

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