“My mother's voice and my father's fists are two bookends of my childhood, and they form the basis of my art.” — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
The great thing about all my siblings is we all agree we had a horrendous childhood. It's not like it doesn't affect… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
I loved my parents... but that can never change the fact that my father's violence ruined my childhood. — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
“As his children, we were treated as some species of migrant workers who happened to be passing through. My father was the… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
The children of warriors in our country learn the grace and caution that come from a permanent sense of estrangement. — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
These are the quicksilver moments of my childhood I cannot remember entirely. Irresistible and emblematic, I can recall them only in fragments… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
We children sat transfixed before that moon our mother had called forth from the waters. When the moon had reached its deepest… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
I meet kids now who become novelists, poets, write for the theater and movies, who were simply inspired by what they saw… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
Mama always taught her children that words were pretty, but anyone can talk. She said, pay attention to that man or woman… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
My mother thought of my father as half barbarian and half blunt instrument, and she isolated him from his children. — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory. — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
I still get weepy when I see a father being nice to his child. It so affects me. — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
“As time passed from solstice to mild solstice in those occluded zones of my early childhood, I played beneath the distracted majesty… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
“In every southerner, beneath the veneer of clichés lies a much deeper motherlode of cliché. But even cliché is overlaid with enormous… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
I told my kids when they were little, 'Look, kids, your mother and I are screwing you up somehow. We don't understand… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
Of the Yamacraw children, I can say little. I don't think I changed the quality of their lives significantly or altered the… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
“Think instead about children. People. Human beings. Feel for once that education is about people—not figures.” — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
It's an article of faith that the novels I've loved will live inside me forever. — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
“my folks wouldn't read a book if you put a gun to their dicks. but they read people all day long and always get… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
Cameras are a lifesaver for very shy people who have nowhere else to hide. Behind a lens they can disguise the fact that they… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
Carolina beach music," Dupree said, coming up on the porch. "The holiest sound on earth. — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
“My memory often seems like a city of exiled poets afire with the astonishment of language, each believing in the integrity of his own… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
“We began our life together at a moment of natural self-pity and defeat that left an inimitable impression on both of us. The rejection… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
“I always liked your piety, Jack.” “I’m a lot cuter than the women of your generation,” Betsy said, playing up to Capers and Mike.… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
“From the beginning I've searched out those writers unafraid to stir up the emotions, who entrust me with their darkest passions, their most indestructible… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
“My mother's voice and my father's fists are two bookends of my childhood, and they form the basis of my art.” — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
“Over the years, my church gave me passage into a menagerie of exotic words unknown in the South: "introit," "offertory," "liturgy," "movable feast," "the… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
