black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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 Conroy

I’ve never had anyone’s approval, so I’ve learned to live without it.
PAT CONROY

Anyone Approve Learn Live never Without
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
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
Good writing is the hardest form of thinking.
PAT CONROY

Good Hardest Think Write
One does not know where love will take you.
PAT CONROY

Know Love One Does Take
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
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
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
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
Here’s what I love: when a great writer turns me into a Jew from Chicago, a lesbian out of South Carolina, or a black woman moving into a subway entrance in Harlem. Turn me into something else, writers of the world. Make me Muslim, heretic, hermaphrodite.
PAT CONROY

Black Country Great Jew Lesbian Love Me Move South Turn Woman
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
I loved my parents… but that can never change the fact that my father’s violence ruined my childhood.
PAT CONROY

Change Childhood Fact Father Love never Parent Run Violence
Faulkner didn’t know he was William Faulkner. But they had to take the first step. They had to call themselves writers. That is the first revolutionary act a writer has to make. It takes courage. But it’s necessary
PAT CONROY

Country Courage First Necessary People Person Revolutionary Step Themselves
Happiness is an accident of nature, a beautiful and flawless aberration.
PAT CONROY

Aberration Accident Bature Beautiful Flawless Happiness
Good writing … 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 Fit Force Good Human Into Kucid Profound Thought Tight Write

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Pat Conroy Quotes