Books Quotes by Pat Conroy

Writing poetry and reading books causes brain damage.

— Pat Conroy

I think I learned about the relationship between books and life from Margaret Mitchell.

— Pat Conroy

I love books about treks and journeys into the unknown.

— Pat Conroy

“I take it as an article of faith that the novels I've loved will live inside me forever.”

— Pat Conroy

It's an article of faith that the novels I've loved will live inside me forever.

— Pat Conroy

The world of literature has everything in it, and it refuses to leave

— Pat Conroy

I could not bear to think that I wrote a five-hundred page novel just because I needed to love my father.

— Pat Conroy

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

— Pat Conroy

You do not learn how to write novels in a writing program. You learn how by leading an interesting life. Open yourself…

— Pat Conroy

I'm not the lovable, wonderful, tenderhearted grandfather that you read about in books. I'm grouchy and curmudgeonly, and I have a lot…

— Pat Conroy

“I have built a city from the books I've read. A good book sings a a timeless music that is heard in…

— Pat Conroy

“When you write by hand, you don't have the excessive freedom of a computer. When I write down something, I have to…

— Pat Conroy

“my folks wouldn't read a book if you put a gun to their dicks. but they read people all day long and…

— Pat Conroy

“Read the great books, gentlemen,” Mr. Monte said one day. “Just the great ones. Ignore the others. There’s not enough time.”

— Pat Conroy

My mother, Southern to the bone, once told me, "All Southern literature can be summed up in these words: 'On the night…

— Pat Conroy

“I selected all my books for the possibility of some flare of candles along the road toward illumination or enchantment”

— Pat Conroy

My attraction to story is a ceaseless current that runs through the center of me. My inexhaustible ardor for reading seems connected…

— Pat Conroy

My mother, Southern to the bone, once told me, “All Southern literature can be summed up in these words: ‘On the night…

— Pat Conroy

Let me now praise the American writer James Dickey. In 1970, his novel 'Deliverance' was published. I found it to be 278…

— Pat Conroy

“Books are living things and their task lies in their vows of silence. You touch them as they quiver with divine pleasure.…

— Pat Conroy

A novel is a great act of passion and intellect, carpentry and largess. From the very beginning, I wrote to explain my…

— Pat Conroy

“A novelist must wrestle with all mysteries and strangeness of life itself, and anyone who dies not wish to accept that grand,…

— Pat Conroy

Few things linger longer or become more indwelling than that feeling of both completion and emptiness when a great book ends. That…

— Pat Conroy

I can't pass a bookstore without slipping inside, looking for the next book that will burn my hand when I touch its…

— Pat Conroy

“From the beginning I've searched out those writers unafraid to stir up the emotions, who entrust me with their darkest passions, their…

— Pat Conroy

...when the words pour out of you just right, you understand that these sentences are all part of a river flowing out…

— Pat Conroy

The most powerful words in English are 'Tell me a story,' words that are intimately related to the complexity of history, the…

— Pat Conroy

Here's what I want from a book, what I demand, what I pray for when I take up a novel and begin…

— Pat Conroy

Her library would have been valuable to a bibliophile except she treated her books execrably. I would rarely open a volume that…

— Pat Conroy

“The world of literature has everything in it, and it refuses to leave anything out. I have read like a man on…

— Pat Conroy

I learned that if I could read, I could cook. I surprised myself I like it.

— Pat Conroy

“My mother saw in 'Gone With the Wind' the text of liberating herself, ... She took 'Gone With the Wind' as the…

— Pat Conroy

When my novel 'Beach Music' came out in 1995, I had included a couple of recipes in the book and had tried…

— Pat Conroy

“In our modern age, there are writers who have heaped scorn on the very idea of the primacy of story. I'd rather…

— Pat Conroy

From the very beginning, I wrote to explain my own life to myself, and I invited any readers who chose to make…

— Pat Conroy

I was born into the century in which novels lost their stories, poems their rhymes, paintings their form, and music its beauty,…

— Pat Conroy

“She had a grocer's faith in books; they can be handed out like Green Stamps and were redeemable for a variety of…

— Pat Conroy

“An author must gorge himself on ten thousand images to select the magical one that can define a piece of the world…

— Pat Conroy

Red Hook Road made me happy, and happy to be alive. It took me out of my home on the coast of…

— Pat Conroy

When I was 5 years old, my mother read me 'Gone With The Wind' at night, before I went to bed. I…

— Pat Conroy