Top 300 Pat Conroy Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “The English language on her tongue became a smoke-screen, without her eyes changing expression in the least.”

— Pat Conroy

252. “The narrator welcomes new students to his school by offering to tell them who the easy teachers are, or who the good ones are.”

— Pat Conroy

253. “And in that instant was born the terrible awareness that life eventually broke every man, but in different ways and at different times.”

— Pat Conroy

254. “Throughout my career I’ve lived in constant fear that I wouldn’t be good enough, that I’d have nothing to say, that I’d be laughed at, humiliated – and I’m old enough to know that fear will follow me to the very last word I’ll ever write. As for now, I feel the first itch of the novel I’m supposed to write – the grain of sand that irritates the soft tissues of the oyster. The beginning of the world as I don’t quite know it. But I trust I’ll begin to know it soon.”

— Pat Conroy

255. “The writing of novels is one of the few ways I have found to approach the altar of God and Creation itself. You try to worship God by performing the singularly courageous and impossible favor of knowing yourself.”

— Pat Conroy

256. “Son, you can do more good at Yamacraw than you could ever do in the Peace Corps. And you would be helping Americans, Pat. And I, for one, think it’s very important to help Americans.”

— Pat Conroy

257. “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.”

— Pat Conroy

258. “Books are living things and their task lies in their vows of silence. You touch them as they quiver with a divine pleasure. You read them and they fall asleep to happy dreams for the next 10 years. If you do them the favor of understanding them, of taking in their portions of grief and wisdom, then they settle down in contented residence in your heart.”

— Pat Conroy

259. “Lucy stood on her tiptoes and kissed John Hardin on the cheek and pulled him tightly against her. She put his forehead against hers and smiled at him until he blushed. Then, Lucy stepped back, looked at the coffin, and played to the crowd. Who gave my secret away It’s just what I always wanted and I can’t wait to try it on.”

— Pat Conroy

260. “My father wouldn’t let me take typing in childhood.”

— Pat Conroy

261. “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.”

— Pat Conroy

262. “No city could be more beautiful than Charleston during the brief reign of azaleas, no city on earth.”

— Pat Conroy

263. “I still write in long hand. I type like a chimpanzee.”

— Pat Conroy

264. “You the white teacher. I thought you one of the boys.” Then she paused. “You gonna drink it?” “Yep.” “Teachers drink?” “Yep.” “That’s good. Oh Gawd, that’s so good. I got some gin in that there paper bag when you finish.”

— Pat Conroy

265. “Once he had drawn first blood, his war against the property of the state lost all its moral resonance.”

— Pat Conroy

266. “A woman in Charlotte approached me and said that she’s 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.”

— Pat Conroy

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

— Pat Conroy

268. “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

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

— Pat Conroy

270. “Among the peoples of the world I am not universally admired for the bell-like clarity of my diction. Words slide out of my mouth like fat fish. Having lived my life in various parts of Georgia, Virginia, and the Carolinas and having been sired by a gruff-talking Marine from Chicago and a grits-and-gravy honey from Rome, Georgia, what has remained is an indefinable nonspeech, flavored subtly with a nonaccent, and decipherable to no one, black or white, on the American continent.”

— Pat Conroy

271. “The past was one country where I tried to limit the number of free trips.”

— Pat Conroy

272. “By carefully editing what I thought would harm her, I turned my childhood into something as glamorous as forbidden fruit.”

— Pat Conroy

273. “Even today, I hunt for the fabulous books that will change me utterly. I find myself happiest in the middle of a book which I forget that I am reading, but am instead immersed in a made-up life lived at the highest pitch.”

— Pat Conroy

274. “We old athletes carry the disfigurements and markings of contests remembered only by us and no one else. Nothing is more lost than a forgotten game.”

— Pat Conroy

275. “The city of Charleston, in the green feathery modesty of its palms, in the certitude of its style, in the economy and stringency of its lines, and the serenity of its mansions South of Broad Street, is a feast for the human eye.”

— Pat Conroy

276. “My father managed to change his entire life after I wrote a novel about his brutal regime as a family man. It took resoluteness and courage for my father to change, and I need to acknowledge that.”

— Pat Conroy

277. “Stories have always hunted me down, jumped out at me from the shadows, stalked me and sought me out, grabbed me by the shirtsleeves, and demanded my full attention. I’ve led a life chock-full of stories, and I know now that you have to be shifty and vigilant and ready to receive their incoming fire. Sometimes it takes the passage of years to reveal their actual meaning or import. They disguise themselves with masks, disfigurements, chimeras, and Trojan horses.”

— Pat Conroy

278. “When we cuss each other out, call each other the vilest names on earth, and put each other down with thoughtless cruelty, it is the only way we know and the only language we have to express our ardent love for each other.”

— Pat Conroy

279. “One noteworthy thing about South Carolina is the quality of school-bus drivers in the state. To qualify for a bus license one must have reached puberty and be able to recite the alphabet without stuttering.”

— Pat Conroy

280. “Do you think that Hemingway knew he was a writer at twenty years old? No, he did not. Or Fitzgerald, or Wolfe. This is a difficult concept to grasp. Hemingway didn’t know he was Ernest Hemingway when he was a young man. Faulkner didn’t know he was William Faulkner. But they had to take the first step. They had to call themselves writers. That is the first revolutionary act a writer has to make. It takes courage. But it’s necessary.”

— Pat Conroy

281. “Reading Tolstoy makes us strive to be better people: better husbands and wives, children, and friends. He tries to teach us how to live by letting us participate in the brimming, storied experiences of his fictional world. Reading Leo Tolstoy, you will encounter a novelist who fell in love with his world and everything he saw and felt in it.”

— Pat Conroy

282. “You blame your parents for so much, Tom. When does it start becoming your own responsibility? When do you take your life into your own hands? When do you start accepting the blame or credit for your own actions?”

— Pat Conroy

283. “And each year, I lose a little bit more of what made me special as a kid. I don’t think as much or question as much. I dare nothing. I put nothing on the line. Even my passions are now frayed and pathetic.”

— Pat Conroy

284. “We’ve made it back to each other. We’ve got lots of time to try our hands at restoring the ruins.”

— Pat Conroy

285. “What I wanted most was a life of vigorous quality.”

— Pat Conroy

286. “My approach to Charleston is always silent and distracted, but I come under full sail, with hissing silk and memories a wing above me in the shapes of the birds I love best.”

— Pat Conroy

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

— Pat Conroy

288. “They love their families with their hearts and souls and they wage war against them to prove it.”

— Pat Conroy

289. “I find myself happiest in the middle of a book in which I forget that I am reading, but am instead immersed in a made-up life lived at the highest pitch.”

— Pat Conroy

290. “Both of them became adept at killing off the best qualities of the other. In some ways, there was something classic and quintessentially American in their marriage. They began as lovers and ended up as the most dangerous and unutterable of enemies. As lovers, they begat children; as enemies, they created damaged, endangered children.”

— Pat Conroy

291. “Hell, Lowenstein! She made a schizophrenic! My mother should have raised cobras, not children!”

— Pat Conroy

292. “She took my hand and squeezed it. “You sold yourself short. You could’ve been more than a teacher and a coach.” I returned the squeeze and said, “Listen to me, Savannah. There’s no word in the language I revere more than teacher. None. My heart sings when a kid refers to me as his teacher and it always has. I’ve honored myself and the entire family of man by becoming one.”

— Pat Conroy

293. “I never seemed to learn from joy; I earned my portion of wisdom through sadness.”

— Pat Conroy

294. “I studied their relationship with something approaching awe because I could not figure out what made it work. I felt love between these two people but it was a love without flame or passion. There were also no rancors or fevers, no risings or ebbings of the spirit to chart, just a marriage without weather, a stillness, a resignation, just windless days in the Gulf Stream of their quiet aging.”

— Pat Conroy

295. “I wish I had no history to report. I’ve pretended for so long that my childhood did not happen. I had to keep it tight, up near the chest. I could not let it out.”

— Pat Conroy

296. “No one has the patent on human suffering. People hurt in different ways and for different reasons.”

— Pat Conroy

297. “I felt the sharp sting of emptiness and solitude that you feel so acutely and with such internal sorrow and wonder whenever music is performed well.”

— Pat Conroy

298. “Early on, I had contracted that dread affliction of oldest or only children – I lived for the absolute approval of my parents.”

— Pat Conroy

299. “Young girls have an infinite capacity for being attracted to the wrong sort of men.”

— Pat Conroy

300. “It has always been difficult for me to face the truth about my childhood because it requires a commitment to explore the lineaments and features of a history I would prefer to forget. For years I did not have to face the demonology of my youth; I made a simple choice not to and found solace in the gentle palmistry of forgetfulness, a refuge in the cold, lordly glooms of the unconscious. But I was drawn back to the history of my family and the failures of my own adult life.”

— Pat Conroy