Pat Conroy

“The music acted as a marinade in my weary spirit.”

— Pat Conroy

Writing has never been that simple for me.

— Pat Conroy

“One must always forgive another's passion.”

— Pat Conroy

“You must appreciate beauty for it to endure.”

— Pat Conroy

There is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss.

— Pat Conroy

I love books about treks and journeys into the unknown.

— Pat Conroy

“i was delighted I had offended her upholstered sensibilities.”

— pat conroy

Love came in wounded and frantic ways to my dismaying family.

— 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

The fruit tasted foreign but indigenous, like sunlight a tree had changed through patience.

— Pat Conroy

“I never once approached greatness, but toward the end of my career, I was always in the game.”

— Pat Conroy

“She understood the nature of sin and knew that its most volatile form was the kind that did not recognize itself.”

— Pat Conroy

The pursuit of greatness means that laziness has no place in your life.

— Pat Conroy

“I'm sorry your bad dream died," I said as I left her and walked toward the gate. "And I'm sorry I ever…

— Pat Conroy

“Though I felt like a voyeur to some kind of disaster, my eyes were riveted to the scene ...”

— Pat Conroy

Basketball allowed me to revere my father without him knowing what I was up to. I took up basketball as a form…

— Pat Conroy

There is such a thing as too much beauty in a woman and it is often a burden as crippling as homeliness…

— Pat Conroy

My great fear of being attacked or trivialized by my contemporaries made me concentrate on what I was trying to do as…

— Pat Conroy

The great teachers fill you up with hope and shower you with a thousand reasons to embrace all aspects of life. I…

— 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

“Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into a lucid form and…

— Pat Conroy

“The words “I love you” could contain all the bloodthirsty despair of the abattoir, all the hopelessness of the most isolated, frozen…

— Pat Conroy

“In every southerner, beneath the veneer of clichés lies a much deeper motherlode of cliché. But even cliché is overlaid with enormous…

— Pat Conroy

These are the quicksilver moments of my childhood I cannot remember entirely. Irresistible and emblematic, I can recall them only in fragments…

— Pat Conroy

To describe our growing up in the lowcountry of South Carolina, I would have to take you to the marsh on a…

— Pat Conroy

It is the secret life that sustains me now, and as I reach the top of that bridge I say it in…

— Pat Conroy

“In sport the mind serves as the acolyte and apprentice of the body. Nothing interferes with the flow of the game more…

— 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

“The Bear had once confided to me that Durrell's ego could fit snugly in the basilica of St. Peter's in Rome but…

— Pat Conroy

“Again, I know that story is suspect in the high precincts of American fiction, but only because it brings entertainment and pleasure,…

— Pat Conroy

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

“I meditated on the nature of friendship as I practiced the craft. My friends had always come from outside the mainstream. I…

— Pat Conroy

“Great teachers had great personalities and that the greatest teachers had outrageous personalities. I did not like decorum or rectitude in a…

— Pat Conroy

“There was a time when a new deputy tried to teach Mr. Fruit about the difference between a red and a green…

— Pat Conroy

“It was my father who called the city the Mansion on the River. He was talking about Charleston, South Carolina, and he…

— Pat Conroy

“I always liked your piety, Jack.” “I’m a lot cuter than the women of your generation,” Betsy said, playing up to Capers…

— Pat Conroy

“I had come to Charleston as a young boy, a lonely visitor slouching through its well-tended streets, a young boy, lean and…

— Pat Conroy

“Over the years, my church gave me passage into a menagerie of exotic words unknown in the South: "introit," "offertory," "liturgy," "movable…

— Pat Conroy

“I had come to know the singular power of a river advancing toward the open sea and the power of tides regulating…

— Pat Conroy