Quotes from Katherine Clark

But when The Prince of Tides came out, thank God she was dead. I'm not sure I would have had the guts to publish that with her still alive.

With poetry, you take the stock and boil it down to where it's a glaze. It is the elixir of language.

The two most dangerous words in the English language are 'like' and 'as.' If you do not have something interesting to say after you write down those two words, cross them out, because you've entered into the country of cliché. Make sure you have something to say that is new or fresh or in a different way; otherwise, leave them alone.

Why do they not teach you that time is a fingersnap and an eyeblink, and that you should not allow a moment to pass you by without taking joyous, ecstatic note of it, not wasting a single moment of its swift, breakneck circuit? PAT CONROY, My Losing Season

My mother sits on my shoulder, and my mother: 'Be nice to everyone, son. Make sure you talk to everyone. Ask them a personal question, son. At least pretend like you're sincere.' And her final thing: 'Whoever you meet, make sure they leave your presence happy

I've always thought that the supreme relationship is the one between mother and child, and the bond of mothers and sons can be devastatingly intimate like no other relationship on earth.

Much of what we do in life is repair work on our childhood. We try to make it better than it was when we were growing up. But usually our insecurities remain our insecurities.

Conroy himself suffered cruelties and injustices throughout his life, from the time he was a child beaten by a violent and abusive father. The man who emerged from the crucible of chronic trauma was a warrior of words, determined to bear witness to the wrongs inflicted on the innocent and vulnerable by the corrupt and powerful.

My theory of the universe is if God sees you enjoying yourself, he will fuck up the next week of your life completely.

Behind all that thunder, you're just pure honey," is as true a statement about Pat Conroy as it is of Jack McCall in Beach Music.

When you've got a father who beats you, as a kid you think it's your fault. You develop a self-destructive belief that you're no good. The conflict Pat's always had is whether he's worth anything or worth nothing. MARION O'NEILL, Ph.D., ABPP, clinical psychologist

My father confused me about what it meant to become a man. From an early age, I knew I didn't want to be anything like the man he was. PAT CONROY, My Reading Life

My body was telling me to rest the old machine for a while. Every afternoon about six o'clock I watched The Waltons, to try to heal myself just to get back what human kindness looked like. It was tonic for my soul. That seems so hokey, but that's what I needed right then—hokeyness—some blessed way of living. I was still writing the book somehow, I was drinking too much, and I would await these phone calls from Lenore with dread, just absolute dread.

They were simply the moanings of sperm cells locked away too long in scrotums.