Quotes by Pat Conroy

“One can learn anything, anything at all, I thought, if provided by a gifted and passionate teacher.”

“I can forgive almost any crime if a great story is left in its wake.”

“Because I’ve gotten older, I worry that there will be a steep decline in my talent, but I promise not to let the same thing happen to my passion for writing.”

“I was a watchful boy being raised by a father I didn’t admire. In a desperate way, I needed the guidance of someone who could show me another way of becoming a man. It was sometime during the year ...”

“I’ve written more about my parents than any writer in the history of the world, and I still return to their mysterious effigies as I try to figure out what it all means—some kind of annunciation or...”

“We had made the error of staying small – and there is no more unforgivable crime in America.”

“The body's a funny thing. It's so full of surprises that it makes conventional wisdom seem silly.”

“Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.”

“I have built a city from the books I've read. A good book sings a a timeless music that is heard in the choir lofts, and balconies, and theaters that thrived within that secret city inside me.”

“I do not think I was a hothead—not then and not now. I thought I was right. I had read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bible. Segregation seemed evil from the time I was ...”

“I was born in the age of "alas".”

“The water was pure and cold and came out of the Apennines tasting like snow melted in the hands of a pretty girl.”

“Her laughter was a shiny thing, like pewter flung high in the air.”

“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 pear...”

“I bet they love those games on Friday night more than they do segregation.”

“Before I met the Jesuits, I’d never encountered another group who thought that intellect and arrogance were treasures beyond price and necessities in waging wars against blasphemers, heretics.”

“Without music life is a journey through a desert.”