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Happiness is an accident of nature, a beautiful and flawless aberration.

Pat Conroy

I had come to a place where I was meant to be. I don’t mean anything so prosaic as a sense of coming home. This was different, very different. It was like arriving at a place much safer than home.
PAT CONROY

Anything Be Come Home Mean Meant Place Prosaic Sense
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
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
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
I’d be a conservative if I’d never met any. They’re selfish, mean-spirited, egocentric, reactionary, and boring.
PAT CONROY

Any Bore Conservative Egocentric Mean never Reactionary Selfish Spirited
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
When men talk about the agony of being men, they can never quite get away from the recurrent theme of self-pity.
PAT CONROY

Agony Away Being Mne Pity Quite Recurrent Self Take Theme
Why 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 CONROY

Allow Blink Eye Finger Moment Pass Should Snap Teach Time
The mind is an intricate mechanism that can be run on the fuels of both victory and defeatism.
PAT CONROY

Both Defeatism Fuel Intricate Mechanism Mind Run Victory
But no one walks out of his family without reprisals: a family is too disciplined an army to offer compassion to its deserters.
PAT CONROY

Army Compassion Deserter Discipline Family Offer Out Reprisal Walk
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
Political correctness has a stranglehold on academia, on feminism, and on the media. It is a form of both madness and maggotry, and has already silenced the voices of writers like James Dicky across the land.
PAT CONROY

Across Already Correctness Land Madness Maggotry Medis Political Stranglehold
My soul found ease and rest in the companionship of books.
PAT CONROY

Book Companionship Ease Found Rest Soul
Tell me everything that I must know. Hold nothing back.
PAT CONROY

Back Everything Know Must Nothing Tell
I’ve always found paranoia to be a perfectly defensible position.
PAT CONROY

Always Defensible Found Paranoia Perfectly Position
Urge them toward excellence, drive them toward gentleness, pull them deep into yourself, pull them upward toward manhood, but softly like an angel arranging clouds. Let your spirit move through them softly.
PAT CONROY

Deep Excellence Manhood Men Softly Spirit Toward Urge
It did not look like the work of God, but it might have represented the handicraft of a God with a joyous sense of humor, a dancing God who loved mischief as much as prayer, and playfulness as much as mischief.
PAT CONROY

God Handicraft Joyous Look Might Represent Sense Of Humour Work
And when women talk about being women, they can never quite get away from the recurrent theme of blaming men.
PAT CONROY

Being Blame Get Men Quite Recurrent Talk Theme Way When Women
Men are prisoners of their genitalia and women are the keepers of the keys to paradise.
PAT CONROY

Genitalia Keeper Key Men Paradise Prisoner Women
Each of us would remember that all during our lives. It was the purest moment of freedom and headlong exhilaration that I had ever felt. A wordless covenant was set, and I would go back in my imagination, and return to where happiness seemed so easy to touch.
PAT CONROY

During Easy Exhilaration Freedom Happiness Imagination Moment Remember Seem Wordless
But even her demons she invested with inordinate beauty, consecrated them with the dignity of her attention.
PAT CONROY

Attention Beauty Consecrate Democrats Dignity Even Inordinate Invest She
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 Storied South , is a love song to the South Bill helped illuminate. It’s a crowning achievement of his own storied career.
PAT CONROY

Achievement Career Help Illuminate Song South Story
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
Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.
PAT CONROY

Again Chamber End never Once Over Play Quester Travel Voyage

Happiness is an accident of nature, a beautiful and flawless aberration.

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Happiness is an accident of nature, a beautiful and flawless aberration.

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