Pat Conroy Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• 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

  Writing, Agony, Uniforms

  58 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

• I prayed hard and only gradually became aware that this fierce praying was a way of finding prologue and entrance into my own writing. This came as both astonishment and relief. When I thought God had abandoned me, I discovered that He had simply given me a different voice to praise the inexhaustible beauty of the made world.

  Pat Conroy

  Writing, Voice, World

  41 Copy quote

• Each divorce is the death of a small civilization.

  Pat Conroy

  Marriage, Divorce, Civilization

  48 Copy quote

• One of the greatest gifts you can get as a writer is to be born into an unhappy family.

  Pat Conroy

  Unhappy, Happy Family, Born

  "Pat Conroy obituary" by Michael Carlson, www.theguardian.com. March 7, 2016.

  22 Copy quote

• I could bear the memory, but I could not bear the music that made the memory such a killing thing.

  Pat Conroy

  Memories, Bears, Killing

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

  45 Copy quote

• There are no ideas in the South, just barbecue.

  Pat Conroy

  Ideas, Barbecue, South

  "The Prince of Tides". Book by Pat Conroy, www.huffingtonpost.com. 2010.

  9 Copy quote

• Baseball fans love numbers. They love to swirl them around their mouths like Bordeaux wine.

  Pat Conroy

  Baseball, Wine, Numbers

  22 Copy quote

• All life connects ... Nothing happens that is meaningless.

  Pat Conroy

  Life, Happens, Things Happen

  9 Copy quote

• Man wonders but God decides When to kill the Prince of Tides.

  Pat Conroy

  Men, Tides, Wonder

  Pat Conroy (2010). “The Prince of Tides: A Novel”, p.45, Open Road Media

  32 Copy quote

• 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

  Home, Mean, Arriving

  Pat Conroy (2016). “The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, and The Prince of Tides: Three Classic Novels in One Collection”, p.562, Open Road Media

  17 Copy quote

• Losing prepares you for the heartbreak, setback, and the tragedy that you will encounter in the world more than winning ever can. By licking your wounds you learn how to avoid getting wounded the next time.

  Pat Conroy

  Winning, Tragedy, Encounters

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

  15 Copy quote

• Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.

  Pat Conroy

  Writing, Way, My Own

  17 Copy quote

• 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

  Betrayal, Integrity, Perfect

  Pat Conroy (2010). “The Prince of Tides: A Novel”, p.79, Open Road Media

  9 Copy quote

• Laughter is the only strategy that has ever worked at all for me when my world is falling apart.

  Pat Conroy

  Laughter, Fall, World

  Pat Conroy (2010). “The Prince of Tides: A Novel”, p.137, Open Road Media

  19 Copy quote

• 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. 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

  Life Changing, Writing, Thinking

  21 Copy quote

• 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

  Mother, Night, Daddy

  Pat Conroy (2016). “A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections on a Writing Life”, p.144, Nan A. Talese

  26 Copy quote

• I do not have any other way of saying it. I think it happens but once and only to the very young when it feels like your skin could ignite at the mere touch of another person. You get to love like that but once.

  Pat Conroy

  Thinking, Skins, Way

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

  11 Copy quote

• Carolina beach music," Dupree said, coming up on the porch. "The holiest sound on earth.

  Pat Conroy

  Beach, Sound, Earth

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

  15 Copy quote

• 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. 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. Tell me everything that I must know. Hold nothing back.

  Pat Conroy

  Queens, Moving, Black

  15 Copy quote

• ... silence (can) be the most eloquent form of lying.

  Pat Conroy

  Lying, Silence, Form

  15 Copy quote

• Men are prisoners of their genitalia and women are the keepers of the keys to paradise.

  Pat Conroy

  Men, Keys, Paradise

  9 Copy quote

• Know this. I think you could be special if you only thought there was anything special about yourself.

  Pat Conroy

  Thinking, Special, About Yourself

  Pat Conroy (2010). “My Losing Season”, p.139, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Mirrors, Camouflage, Strategy

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

  24 Copy quote

• I've always found paranoia to be a perfectly defensible position.

  Pat Conroy

  Dignity, Paranoia, Found

  Pat Conroy (2010). “The Prince of Tides: A Novel”, p.141, Open Road Media

  24 Copy quote

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