Pat Conroy Quotes

Carolina beach music," Dupree said, coming up on the porch. "The holiest sound on earth.

[...] I learned from those evening recitals that music could ache and hurt, that beautiful music was a place a suffering man could hide.

Fantasy is one of the soul's brighter porcelains.

The best thing about a small town is that you grow up knowing everyone. It is also the worst thing.

I do not know why it is that I have always been happier thinking of somewhere I have been or wanted to go, than where I am at the time. I find it difficult to be happy in the present.

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

It's politics, sugarpeeps," I said. "It makes everybody stupid. When you grow up, you'll know what I mean.

But no one walks out of his family without reprisals: a family is too disciplined an army to offer compassion to its deserters.

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.

The only word for goodness is goodness, and it is not enough.

These are the quicksilver moments of my childhood I cannot remember entirely. Irresistible and emblematic, I can recall them only in fragments and shivers of the heart.

Man wonders but God decides / When to kill the Prince of Tides.

In families, there are no crimes beyond forgiveness.

I would take you to the marsh on a spring day, flush the great blue heron from its silent occupation. Scatter marsh hens as we sink to our knees in mud, open an oyster with a pocket knife, feed it to you from the shell and say, "There. That taste. That's the taste of my childhood." I would say, "Breathe deeply," and you would breathe and remember that smell for the rest of your life. That bold aroma of the tidal marsh, exquisite and sensual, the smell of the South in heat, a smell like new milk and spilled wine, all perfumed with sea water.

My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call.