Quotes by Pat Conroy

About Pat Conroy:

Pat Conroy is a New York Times bestselling author who has written several acclaimed novels and memoirs. Two of his novels, The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini, were made into Oscar-nominated films. He is recognized as a leading figure of late-20th century Southern literature.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I learned that if I could read, I could cook. I surprised myself I like it.

Pat Conroy

Rape is a crime against sleep and memory; it's after image imprints itself like an irreversible negative from the camera obscure of dreams. Though their bodies would heal, their souls had sustained a damage beyond compensation

Pat Conroy

The desolate narrowness, the definitive thinness of experience is both the vainglory and the dead giveaway of a provincial man.

Pat Conroy

I became one of those anonymous Americans who tries to keep his mind sharp and inquisitive while performing all the humiliating rituals of the middle class

Pat Conroy

Together they spent their whole lives waiting for their luck to change, as though luck were some fabulous tide that would one day flood and consecrate the marshes of our island, christening us in the iridescent ointments of a charmed destiny.

Pat Conroy

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 softly like an angel arranging clouds. Let your spirit mo...

Pat Conroy

A family is one of nature's solubles; it dissolves in time like salt in rainwater.

Pat Conroy

In families, there are no crimes beyond forgiveness.

Pat Conroy

A portion of guilt is standard issue for southern boys; our whole lives are convoluted, egregious apologies to our mothers because our fathers have made us such flawed husbands.

Pat Conroy

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

Pat Conroy

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

Pat Conroy

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 well for many years. He had not only monitored the co...

Pat Conroy

She had a grocer's faith in books; they can be handed out like Green Stamps and were redeemable for a variety of useful gifts.

Pat Conroy

Saints make wonderful grandfathers and lousy husbands.

Pat Conroy

When men talk about the agony of being men, they can never quite get away from the recurrent theme of self-pity. And when women talk about being women, they can never quite get away from the recurrent theme of blaming men.

Pat Conroy

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

Pat Conroy

As time passed from solstice to mild solstice in those occluded zones of my early childhood, I played beneath the distracted majesty of my mother's blue-eyed gaze. With her eyes on me I felt as if I were being studied by flowers.

Pat Conroy

Comely was the town by the curving river that they dismantled in a year's time. Beautiful was Colleton in her last spring as she flung azaleas like a girl throwing rice at a desperate wedding. In dazzling profusion, Colleton ripened in a gauze of swe...

Pat Conroy

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

Pat Conroy

I lived with the terrible knowledge that one day I would be an old man still waiting for my real life to start. Already, I pitied that old man.

Pat Conroy

i was delighted I had offended her upholstered sensibilities.

Pat Conroy

Author Bio

  • NamePat Conroy
  • DescriptionNovelist
  • BornOctober 26, 1945
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionBaseball Player; Novelist
  • WorksThe Great Santini; The Lords Of Discipline; The Prince Of Tides
  • AwardsLillian Smith Book Award