Quotes from Pat Conroy

My poor boat poked along the waterway with the blinding speed of a manatee.

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.

When you write by hand, you don't have the excessive freedom of a computer. When I write down something, I have to be serious about it. I have to ask myself, Is this necessary at this point in the book?

You have to pay for this view (onto which he looks while writing), so our expenses keep us pretty motivated to write. It's a vicious cycle.

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

It's impossible to explain to a Yankee what 'tacky' is. They simply have no word for it up north, but my God, do they ever need one.

My friends had always come from outside the mainstream. I had always been popular with the fifth column of my peers, those individuals who were princely in their solitude, lords of their own unpraised melancholy.

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

Bernie could talk a Baptist into burning a Bible

taught autistic children in Georgetown County and when asked about why he chose such a profession he would say, "After growing up in this family, I found autism refreshing.

In the hour it took to finish that meal, I learned that silence could be the most eloquent form of lying.

thought you didn't believe in God," I said to Savannah as we moved slowly past the Coast Guard base at the end of the Charleston peninsula. "I don't," Savannah answered, "but I believe in Luke and he believes in God and I always believe in God when I truly need him." "Situational faith," I said.

I'm sorry your bad dream died, I said as I left her and walked toward the gate. And I'm sorry I ever met you, Annie Kate.

I bet they love those games on Friday night more than they do segregation.

I WOULD NOT HAVE RETURNED TO this year of 1966 if I had not experienced one of those life-changing encounters on the road that rise up periodically to let us know that fate remains inexorable in its utter strangeness and its capacity for astonishment. At

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.

I was becoming convinced that the world was a colorful, variegated grab bag full of bastards. But

Generosity is the rarest of qualities in American writers.

I've always felt a vague sense of guilt that I search for plunder and inspiration in every book or poem or story I pick up. Other people's books are treasures when stories emerge in molten ingots that a writer can shape to fit his or her own talents. Magical theft has always played an important part of my own writer's imagination.

I was afforded a glimpse of the marsh at ease, a glimpse of the land at rest from the penetration and mindless barbarisms of man.

Ezra was smooth as good bourbon, the consummate politician who could talk honey as well as he could act vinegar.

A psychiatrist oblivious to money is like a sumo wrestler oblivious to body fat.

By now accustomed to Billie's personal flamboyancies, I

There is nothing more erotic on earth than a boy in love with the shape and touch of his mother. It is the most exquisite, most proscribed lust. It is also the most natural and damaging.