One can learn anything, anything at all, I thought, if provided by a gifted and passionate teacher. Pat Conroy More Quotes by Pat Conroy More Quotes From Pat Conroy What's important is that a story changes every time you say it out loud. When you put it on paper, it can never change. But the more times you tell it, the more changes will occur. A story is a living thing; it moves and shifts Pat Conroy important stories moving Looking around, I thought the human species was in fine shape and tried to think of something more beautiful than women and couldn't come up with a thing. The propagation of the species was a dance of total joy. Pat Conroy joy beautiful thinking It enclosed us in its laceries as we watched the moon spill across the Atlantic like wine from an overturned glass. With the light all around us, we felt secret in that moon-infused water like pearls forming in the soft tissues of oysters. Pat Conroy glasses wine moon I've never cackled with laughter at a single line I've ever written. None of it has given me pleasure. Pat Conroy laughter pleasure lines Few things linger longer or become more indwelling than that feeling of both completion and emptiness when a great book ends. That the book accompanies the reader forever from that day forward is part of literature's profligate generosity. Pat Conroy generosity forever book Of the Yamacraw children, I can say little. I don't think I changed the quality of their lives significantly or altered the inexorable fact that they were imprisoned by the very circumstance of their birth. Pat Conroy quality children thinking He was one of those rare men who are capable of being fully in love only once in their lives. Pat Conroy tides capable men I was born to be a point guard, but not a very good one. Pat Conroy point-guard very-good born Men are prisoners of their genitalia and women are the keepers of the keys to paradise. Pat Conroy paradise keys men Here's what I want from a book, what I demand, what I pray for when I take up a novel and begin to read the first sentence: I want everything and nothing less, the full measure of a writer's heart. I want a novel so poetic that I do not have to turn to the standby anthologies of poetry to satisfy that itch for music, for perfection and economy of phrasing, for exactness of tone. Then, too, I want a book so filled with story and character that I read page after page without thinking of food or drink because a writer has possessed me, crazed with an unappeasable thirst to know what happens next. Pat Conroy heart character book A recipe is a story that ends with a good meal. Pat Conroy recipes meals stories I was the only person in the world who thought it was a military duty to appear to be in a good mood. Pat Conroy good-mood military world She thought she brought a gift of compassion for those exhausted souls who had not received a chest portion from the people who raised them. If compassion and therapy did not work, she could always send her patients to the local pharmacy for drugs. Pat Conroy drug compassion people Because she deserved my tears if anyone on earth ever did. I could feel the tears within me, undiscovered, and untouched in their inland sea. Those tears had been with me always. Pat Conroy tears earth sea If smallness was fortune, then I had come across a treasure, infinitesimal and beyond value. I felt lucky. You had to decide what was estimable and precious in your life and set out to find it. The objects you valued defined you. Pat Conroy treasure lucky fortune It is an art form to hate New York City properly. So far I have always been a featherweight debunker of New York; it takes too much energy and endurance to record the infinite number of ways the city offends me. Pat Conroy hate new-york art We set down feasts for each other and treated our love with tongues of fire. Our bodies were fields of wonder to us. Pat Conroy our-love body fire The only way I could endure being a coward was if I was the only one who knew it. Pat Conroy coward pride way There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory. Pat Conroy verdict childhood memories I meet kids now who become novelists, poets, write for the theater and movies, who were simply inspired by what they saw during the Spoleto Festival. Pat Conroy novelists writing kids
