Quotes by Pat Conroy

“Losing well was a gift, but winning well is this stuff of the authentic manhood.”

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

“Good coaching is good teaching and nothing else.”

“Evil would always come to me disguised in systems and dignified by law.”

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

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

“College was to teach me that I was one of life's journeymen, eager to excel but lacking the requisite gifts.”

“I would always be a better hater of things and institutions than a lover of them.”

“If any writer in this country has collected as fine and passionate a group of readers as I have, theyre fortunate and lucky beyond anyones imagination. It remains a shock to me that Ive had a succe...”

“To have attracted readers is the most magical part of my writing life. I was not expecting you to show up when I wrote my first books. It took me by surprise. It filled me with gratitude. It still ...”

“The teachers of my life saved my life and sent me out prepared for whatever life I was meant to lead. Like everyone else, I had some bad ones and mediocre ones, but I never had one that I thought w...”

“My career still strikes me as miraculous. That a boy raised on Marine bases in the South, taught by Roman Catholic nuns in backwater Southern towns that loathed Catholics, and completed his educati...”

“You must appreciate beauty for it to endure.”

“Later, long after my grandfather was dead, I would regret that I could never be the kind of man that he was. Though I adored him as a child and found myself attracted to the safe protectorate of hi...”

“One must always forgive another's passion.”

“I had come to a place where I was meant to be. I don't mean anything so prosaic as a sense of coming home. This was different, very different. It was like arriving at a place much safer than home.”

“I've always admired people who give accurate directions, and the tribe is small.”

“Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into a lucid form and forcing them into the tightfitting uniform of language, making the...”

“You're going to act like a happy man. I know, I know. It's the hardest role in the world.”

“Teach them the quiet words of kindness, to live beyond themselves. Urge them toward excellence, drive them toward gentleness, pull them deep into yourself, pull them upward toward manhood, but soft...”