There are other writers who try for subtle and minimalists effects, but I don't travel in that tribe. — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
“Fear is the major cargo that American writers must stow away when the writing life calls them into its carefully chosen ranks.” — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
Let me now praise the American writer James Dickey. In 1970, his novel 'Deliverance' was published. I found it to be 278… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
I'm fascinated by the people I grew up with and the mistakes I made - and God, I have screwed up. I… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
My mother, Southern to the bone, once told me, “All Southern literature can be summed up in these words: ‘On the night… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
My great fear of being attacked or trivialized by my contemporaries made me concentrate on what I was trying to do as… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
“Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into a lucid form and… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
I've met many, many writers who say they would never write about their family, never write about people they did not totally… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
You do not learn how to write novels in a writing program. You learn how by leading an interesting life. Open yourself… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
The most powerful words in English are 'Tell me a story,' words that are intimately related to the complexity of history, the… — 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… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
Here's what I love: when a great writer turns me into a Jew from Chicago, a lesbian out of South Carolina, or… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
I prayed hard and only gradually became aware that this fierce praying was a way of finding prologue and entrance into my… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
“Writers of the world, if you’ve got a story, I want to hear it. I promise it will follow me to my… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
Do you think that Hemingway knew he was a writer at twenty years old? No, he did not. Or Fitzgerald, or Wolfe.… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
“I had declared in public my desire to be a writer ... I wanted to develop a curiosity that was oceanic and… — 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
“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 Copy Share Image
One of the greatest gifts you can get as a writer is to be born into an unhappy family. — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
“I wanted to be curious and smart and unappeasable until I got a sentence to mean exactly what I ordered it to… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
“An author must gorge himself on ten thousand images to select the magical one that can define a piece of the world… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
Writing is more about imagination than anything else. I fell in love with words. I fell in love with storytelling. — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
Reading is the most rewarding form of exile and the most necessary discipline for novelists who burn with the ambition to get… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
I would love to see young writers come out of college and know there is a possibility to be a novelist. — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
“The writing of novels is one of the few ways I have found to approach the altar of God and Creation itself.… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
“Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
“It ratified a theory of mine that great writing could sneak up on you, master of a thousand disguises: prodigal kinsman, messenger… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
Good writing ... involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of… — Pat Conroy Copy Share Image
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 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
