Pat Conroy Quotes

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Pat Conroy

Profession : Writer

Birth : October 26, 1945

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

Pat Conroy

The most powerful words in English are 'Tell me a story,' words that are intimately related to the complexity of history, the origins of language, the continuity of the species, the taproot of our humanity, our singularity, and art itself.

Pat Conroy

I became a novelist because of 'Gone With the Wind,' or more precisely, my mother raised me up to be a 'Southern' novelist, with a strong emphasis on the word 'Southern' because 'Gone With the Wind' set my mother's imagination ablaze when she was a young girl growing up in Atlanta.

Pat Conroy

A recipe is a story that ends with a good meal.

Pat Conroy

Writing is more about imagination than anything else. I fell in love with words. I fell in love with storytelling.

Pat Conroy

I would love to see young writers come out of college and know there is a possibility to be a novelist.

Pat Conroy

A novel is a great act of passion and intellect, carpentry and largess. From the very beginning, I wrote to explain my own life to myself, and I invited readers who chose to make the journey with me to join me on the high wire.

Pat Conroy

I told my kids when they were little, 'Look, kids, your mother and I are screwing you up somehow. We don't understand how, or we wouldn't do it. But we're parents. So somehow we're damaging you, and I want you to know that early. So just ignore me when I go to that part of my parenting.'

Pat Conroy

There's always a version of me who is the narrator. And I make myself look better than other people.

Pat Conroy

A family is too frail a vessel to contain the risks of all the warring impulses expressed when such a group meets on common ground.

Pat Conroy

I think that my mother, Frances Dorothy Peck, modeled her whole life on that of Scarlett O'Hara.

Pat Conroy

Let me now praise the American writer James Dickey. In 1970, his novel 'Deliverance' was published. I found it to be 278 pages that approached perfection. Its tightness of construction and assuredness of style reminded me of 'The Great Gatsby.'

Pat Conroy

The University of South Carolina has always played a role in my life and the intellectual life of South Carolina.

Pat Conroy

My father wouldn't let me take typing in childhood.

Pat Conroy

I don't believe in happy families.

Pat Conroy

To Southerners like my mother, 'Gone With the Wind' was not just a book; it was an answer, a clenched fist raised to the North, an anthem of defiance.

Pat Conroy

Every industry is going to be affected (by the aging population). This creates tremendous opportunities and tremendous challenges.

Pat Conroy

I've never cackled with laughter at a single line I've ever written. None of it has given me pleasure.

Pat Conroy

When I was 5 years old, my mother read me 'Gone With The Wind' at night, before I went to bed. I remember her reading almost all year.

Pat Conroy

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