black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

Pat Conroy

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
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
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
Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends.
PAT CONROY

End never Once Travel Voyage
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
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
My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call.
PAT CONROY

Also Anchorage Call Geography Part Would
Music could ache and hurt, that beautiful music was a place a suffering man could hide.
PAT CONROY

Ache Beautiful Hide Hurt Man Music Place Suffer
I lived with the terrible knowledge that one day I would be an old man still waiting for my real life to start. Already, I pitied that old man.
PAT CONROY

Day Knowledge Life Live Man Old One Real Start Still Terrible Wait
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 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
Without music, life is a journey through a desert.
PAT CONROY

Desert Journey Life Music Through Without
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
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
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

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Pat Conroy Quotes