Pat Conroy Quotes

Quotes about:

• American men are allotted just as many tears as American women. But because we are forbidden to shed them, we die long before women do, with our hearts exploding or our blood pressure rising or our livers eaten away by alcohol because that lake of grief inside us has no outlet. We, men, die because our faces were not watered enough.

  Pat Conroy

  Patience, Women, Grief

  374 Copy quote

• To describe our growing up in the lowcountry of South Carolina, I would have to take you to the marsh on a spring day, flush the great blue heron from its silent occupation, scatter marsh hens as we sink to our knees in mud, open an oyster with a pocketknife and feed it to you from the shell and say, 'There. That taste. That's the taste of my childhood.'

  Pat Conroy

  Growing Up, Memories, Spring

  Pat Conroy (2010). “The Prince of Tides: A Novel”, p.9, Open Road Media

  194 Copy quote

• 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

  Eye, Live In The Moment, Mindfulness

  Pat Conroy (2010). “My Losing Season”, p.302, Random House

  144 Copy quote

• Charleston has a landscape that encourages intimacy and partisanship. I have heard it said that an inoculation to the sights and smells of the Carolina lowcountry is an almost irreversible antidote to the charms of other landscapes, other alien geographies. 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

  Ocean, Mountain Ranges, Sight

  Pat Conroy (2010). “The Lords of Discipline: A Novel”, p.21, Open Road Media

  146 Copy quote

• There'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 Conroy

  Teacher, Teaching, Heart

  Pat Conroy (2010). “The Prince of Tides: A Novel”, p.459, Open Road Media

  118 Copy quote

• The most powerful words in English are, 'Tell me a story.'

  Pat Conroy

  Powerful, Stories, Singularity

  65 Copy quote

• I was born and raised on a Carolina sea island and I carried the sunshine of the low-country, inked in dark gold, on my back and shoulders.

  Pat Conroy

  Country, Sunshine, Dark

  Pat Conroy (2010). “The Prince of Tides: A Novel”, p.6, Open Road Media

  87 Copy quote

• 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

  Yankees, Up North, Tacky

  Pat Conroy (2016). “The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, and The Prince of Tides: Three Classic Novels in One Collection”, p.532, Open Road Media

  90 Copy quote

• Books are living things and their task lies in their vows of silence. 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

  Dream, Lying, Grief

  FaceBook post by Pat Conroy from Oct 15, 2013

  86 Copy quote

• 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. 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

  Art, Powerful, Book

  75 Copy quote

• Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

  Pat Conroy

  Music, Journey, Desert

  Pat Conroy (1995). “Beach Music”, Nan A. Talese

  144 Copy quote

• Teach them the quiet words of kindness, to live beyond themselves. 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

  Kindness, Moving, Angel

  64 Copy quote

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

  Pat Conroy

  Approval, I've Learned

  71 Copy quote

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

  Pat Conroy

  South Carolina, States, Cult

  Pat Conroy (2016). “A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections on a Writing Life”, p.61, Nan A. Talese

  16 Copy quote

• I'd be a conservative if I'd never met any. They're selfish, mean-spirited, egocentric, reactionary, and boring.

  Pat Conroy

  Selfish, Mean, Conservative

  Pat Conroy (1995). “Beach Music”, Nan A. Talese

  45 Copy quote

• 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

  Ocean, Moon, Faces

  Pat Conroy (1995). “Beach Music”, Nan A. Talese

  60 Copy quote

• 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

  Inspirational, Life, Travel

  FaceBook post by Pat Conroy from Dec 19, 2013

  22 Copy quote

• Except for memory, time would have no meaning at all.

  Pat Conroy

  Memories

  Pat Conroy (1995). “Beach Music”, Nan A. Talese

  22 Copy quote

• Like everything else, love's not worth much without some action to back it up.

  Pat Conroy

  Action

  Pat Conroy (1995). “Beach Music”, Nan A. Talese

  46 Copy quote

• There is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss.

  Pat Conroy

  Teacher, Loss, Transforming

  Pat Conroy (2002). “My Losing Season”, Nan A. Talese

  58 Copy quote

• …Then another porpoise broke the water and rolled toward us. A third and fourth porpoise neared. The visitation was something so rare and perfect that we knew by instinct not to speak—and then as quickly as they had come, the porpoises moved away from us…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

  Imagination, Perfect, Water

  20 Copy quote

• My soul found ease and rest in the companionship of books.

  Pat Conroy

  Book, Soul, Ease

  Pat Conroy (2010). “My Losing Season”, p.229, Random House

  51 Copy quote

• One can learn anything, anything at all, I thought, if provided by a gifted and passionate teacher.

  Pat Conroy

  Teacher, Passionate, Gifted

  40 Copy quote

• Will his work survive? Alas, I worry that it will not. As an American liberal with impeccable credentials, I would like to say that political correctness is going to kill American liberalism if it is not fought to the death by people like me for the dangers it represents to free speech, to the exchange of ideas, to openheartedness, or to the spirit of art itself. 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

  Art, Media, Land

  17 Copy quote

• Here is all I ask of a book- give me everything. Everything, and don't leave out a single word.

  Pat Conroy

  Book, Giving, Single Word

  64 Copy quote

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