478 Quotes by Pat Conroy

Losing tears along the seam of your own image of yourself. It is a mark of shame that causes internal injury, but no visible damage.

There’s no word in the language I revere more than ‘teacher.’ My heart sings when a kid refers to me as his teacher, and it always has. I’ve honored myself and the entire family of man by becoming a teacher.

Yet I can walk away from best friends and rarely think of them again. I can close a door and not look back. There’s something about my soul that’s always ready to go, to break camp, to unfold the road map, to leave at night when the house inspection’s done and the civilians are asleep and the open road is calling...

Over the years he began displaying that rarest of intellectual gifts – the ability and willingness to change his mind and do it in an orderly, well-reasoned way.

Lucy stood on her tiptoes and kissed John Hardin on the cheek and pulled him tightly against her. She put his forehead against hers and smiled at him until he blushed. Then, Lucy stepped back, looked at the coffin, and played to the crowd. Who gave my secret away It’s just what I always wanted and I can’t wait to try it on.

Lila Wingo would take the raw material of a daughter and shape her into a poet and a psychotic.

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.

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.

Looking around, I thought the human species was in fine shape and tried to think of something more beautiful than women and couldn’t come up with a thing. The propagation of the species was a dance of total joy.