478 Quotes by Pat Conroy

I could bear the memory, but I could not bear the music that made the memory such a killing thing.

My mother thought of my father as half barbarian and half blunt instrument, and she isolated him from his children.

Each divorce is the death of a small civilization.

... the wing of a fly is proof enough of the existence of God for me.

I wrote to explain my own life to myself, stories are the vessels I use to interpret the world to myself.

The most powerful words in English are, 'Tell me a story.'

My mother, Southern to the bone, once told me, “All Southern literature can be summed up in these words: ‘On the night the hogs ate Willie, Mama died when she heard what Daddy did to Sister.’” She raised me up to be a Southern writer, but it wasn’t easy.

Mama always taught her children that words were pretty, but anyone can talk. She said, pay attention to that man or woman who acted, who did, who performed. She taught us to trust in thing we could see, not that we heard.

The great teachers fill you up with hope and shower you with a thousand reasons to embrace all aspects of life.