Quotes by Pat Conroy

“A woman in Charlotte approached me and said that shes tired of the dysfunction in my novels. I told her I was sorry, but that is how the world has presented itself to me throughout my life.”

“Help them, but don't make friends with them.”

“You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up.”

“There was a time when a new deputy tried to teach Mr. Fruit about the difference between a red and a green light, but Mr. Fruit had resisted all efforts to reorder what he had been doing perfectly ...”

“A library could show you everything if you knew where to look.”

“Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.”

“I thought that I must always search for the remarkable combinations, add unknowns, mix things that were clearly marked with things beyond marking. I would leave the simulated test and enter into fo...”

“It would always be my burden, not that I lacked genius, but that I was fully aware of it.”

“You do not learn how to write novels in a writing program. You learn how by leading an interesting life. Open yourself up to all experience. Let life pour through you the way light pours through le...”

“A new novel awaits my arrival, prepares for my careful inspection. Yet a novel is always a long dream that lives in me for years before I know where to go to hunt it out.”

“From the beginning, Ive told journalists that I planned to write better than any writer of my era who graduated from an Ivy League college. It sounds boastful and it is. But The Citadel taught me t...”

“Love had always issued out of the places that hurt the most.”

“The most powerful words in English are, "Tell me a story.”

“The mind is an intricate mechanism that can be run on the fuels of both victory and defeatism.”

“He was one of those rare men who are capable of being fully in love only once in their lives.”

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

“Hurt is a great teacher, maybe the greatest of all.”

“Throughout my career Ive lived in constant fear that I wouldnt be good enough, that Id have nothing to say, that Id be laughed at, humiliatedand Im old enough to know that fear will follow me to th...”

“As his children, we were treated as some species of migrant workers who happened to be passing through. My father was the only person I ever knew who looked upon childhood as a dishonorable vocatio...”

“In every southerner, beneath the veneer of clichs lies a much deeper motherlode of clich. But even clich is overlaid with enormous power when a child is involved.”