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I Do Not Have Any Other Way Of Saying It. I Think It Happens But Once And Only To The Very Young When It Feels Like Your Skin Could Ignite At The Mere Touch Of Another Person. You Get To Love Like That But Once.

-Pat Conroy

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I Do Not Have

Pat Conroy

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I Do Not Have Any Other Way Of Saying It. I Think It Happens But Once And Only To The Very Young When It Feels Like Your Skin Could Ignite At The Mere Touch Of Another Person. You Get To Love Like That But Once.

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Fantasy Is One Of The Soul's Brighter Porcelains.

Every Industry Is Going To Be Affected (by The Aging Population). This Creates Tremendous Opportunities And Tremendous Challenges.

We Wait For The Tortoises To Come. We Wait For That Lady Who Walks Them. That’s How Art Works. It’s Never A Jackrabbit, Or A Racehorse. It’s The Tortoises That Hold All The Secrets. We’ve Got To Be Patient Enough To Wait For Them.

…then Another Porpoise Broke The Water And Rolled Toward Us. A Third And Fourth Porpoise Neared. The Visitation Was Something So Rare And Perfect That We Knew By Instinct Not To Speak—and Then As Quickly As They Had Come, The Porpoises Moved Away From Us…each Of Us Would Remember That All During Our Lives. It Was The Purest Moment Of Freedom And Headlong Exhilaration That I Had Ever Felt. A Wordless Covenant Was Set, And I Would Go Back In My Imagination, And Return To Where Happiness Seemed So Easy To Touch.

Know This. I Think You Could Be Special If You Only Thought There Was Anything Special About Yourself.

The English Language On Her Tongue Became A Smoke-screen, Without Her Eyes Changing Expression In The Least.

Humanity Is Best Described As Inhumanity.

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A Story Is A Living Thing, It Moves And Shifts.

Those Wishing To Be Successful In The Market Can't Ignore The Boomer Numbers, The Wealth And Spending Power They Have.

The Great Teachers Fill You Up With Hope And Shower You With A Thousand Reasons To Embrace All Aspects Of Life. I Wanted To Follow Mr. Monte Around For The Rest Of My Life, Learning Everything He Wished To Share Of Impart, But I Didn't Know How To Ask.

He Was One Of Those Rare Men Who Are Capable Of Being Fully In Love Only Once In Their Lives.

The Mind Is An Intricate Mechanism That Can Be Run On The Fuels Of Both Victory And Defeatism.

Writing Poetry And Reading Books Causes Brain Damage.

Books Are Living Things And Their Task Lies In Their Vows Of Silence. You Touch Them As They Quiver With A Divine Pleasure. You Read Them And They Fall Asleep To Happy Dreams For The Next 10 Years. If You Do Them The Favor Of Understanding Them, Of Taking In Their Portions Of Grief And Wisdom, Then They Settle Down In Contented Residence In Your Heart.

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In Charleston, More Than Elsewhere, You Get The Feeling That The Twentieth Century Is A Vast, Unconscionable Mistake.

Why Do They Not Teach You That Time Is A Finger Snap And An Eye Blink, 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?

Live In The Moment

I Think I Learned About The Relationship Between Books And Life From Margaret Mitchell.

I Loved My Parents... But That Can Never Change The Fact That My Father's Violence Ruined My Childhood.

South Carolina Is Not A State; It Is A Cult.

I Don’t 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.

I Could Bear The Memory, But I Could Not Bear The Music That Made The Memory Such A Killing Thing.

Cameras Are A Lifesaver For Very Shy People Who Have Nowhere Else To Hide. Behind A Lens They Can Disguise The Fact That They Have Nothing To Say To Strangers.

I Learned That If I Could Read, I Could Cook. I Surprised Myself I Like It.

Man Wonders But God Decides When To Kill The Prince Of Tides.

My Mother Thought Of My Father As Half Barbarian And Half Blunt Instrument, And She Isolated Him From His Children.

There Are No Verdicts To Childhood, Only Consequences, And The Bright Freight Of Memory.

But No One Walks Out Of His Family Without Reprisals: A Family Is Too Disciplined An Army To Offer Compassion To Its Deserters.

I Was Born Into The Century In Which Novels Lost Their Stories, Poems Their Rhymes, Paintings Their Form, And Music Its Beauty, But That Does Not Mean I Have To Like That Trend Or Go Along With It.

Isn't It A Shame Military Doctors Couldn't Be As Good As Military Sunglasses?

But Even Her Demons She Invested With Inordinate Beauty, Consecrated Them With The Dignity Of Her Attention.

Basketball Allowed Me To Revere My Father Without Him Knowing What I Was Up To. I Took Up Basketball As A Form Of Homage And Mimicry.

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.

I Would Always Be A Better Hater Of Things And Institutions Than A Lover Of Them.

Each Divorce Is The Death Of A Small Civilization.

Families Without Songs Are Unhappy Families.

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Love's Action. It Isn't Talk And It Never Has Been.

She Had So Mastered The Strategies Of Camouflage That Her Own History Had Seemed A Series Of Well-placed Mirrors That Kept Her Hidden From Herself.

Evil Would Always Come To Me Disguised In Systems And Dignified By Law.

Comely Was The Town By The Curving River That They Dismantled In A Year's Time. Beautiful Was Colleton In Her Last Spring As She Flung Azaleas Like A Girl Throwing Rice At A Desperate Wedding. In Dazzling Profusion, Colleton Ripened In A Gauze Of Sweet Gardens And The Town Ached Beneath A Canopy Of Promissory Fragrance.

In Families, There Are No Crimes Beyond Forgiveness.

A Library Could Show You Everything If You Knew Where To Look.

Writing Is The Only Way I Have To Explain My Own Life To Myself.

Like Everything Else, Love's Not Worth Much Without Some Action To Back It Up.

What's Important Is That A Story Changes Every Time You Say It Out Loud. When You Put It On Paper, It Can Never Change. But The More Times You Tell It, The More Changes Will Occur. A Story Is A Living Thing; It Moves And Shifts

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...when The Words Pour Out Of You Just Right, You Understand That These Sentences Are All Part Of A River Flowing Out Of Your Own Distant, Hidden Ranges, And All Words Become The Dissolving Snow That Feeds Your Mountain Streams Forever. The Language Locks Itself In The Icy Slopes Of Our Own High Passes, And It Is Up To Us, The Writers, To Melt The Glaciers Within Us. When These Glaciers Break Off, We Get To Call Them Novels, The Changelings Of Our Burning Spirits, Our Life's Work.

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My Mother Raised Me To Be A Writer.

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Once You Have Traveled, The Voyage Never Ends.

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Every Athlete Learns By Theft And Mimicry.

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Good Coaching Is Good Teaching And Nothing Else.

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Carolina Beach Music," Dupree Said, Coming Up On The Porch. "the Holiest Sound On Earth.

I Do Not Have Any Other Way Of Saying It. I Think It Happens But Once And Only To The Very Young When It Feels Like Your Skin Could Ignite At The Mere Touch Of Another Person. You Get To Love Like That But Once.

One Does Not Know Where Love Will Take You.

Good Writing Is The Hardest Form Of Thinking.

I Never Read My Reviews... Not Even The Good Ones. Barbra Streisand Once Told Me, If Just One Person In The Audience Doesn't Applaud, It Bothers Her. I'm The Same Way. I'd Be Devastated To Read That Someone Didn't Like My Work.

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.

Writing Has Never Been That Simple For Me.

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She Was One Of Those Southerners Who Knew From An Early Age That The South Could Never Be More For Them Than A Fragrant Prison, Administered By A Collective Of Loving But Treacherous Relatives.

The Fruit Tasted Foreign But Indigenous, Like Sunlight A Tree Had Changed Through Patience.

My Soul Found Ease And Rest In The Companionship Of Books.

Charleston Has A Landscape That Encourages Intimacy And Partisanship. I Have Heard It Said That An Inoculation To The Sights And Smells Of The Carolina Lowcountry Is An Almost Irreversible Antidote To The Charms Of Other Landscapes, Other Alien Geographies. You Can Be Moved Profoundly By Other Vistas, By Other Oceans, By Soaring Mountain Ranges, But You Can Never Be Seduced. You Can Even Forsake The Lowcountry, Renounce It For Other Climates, But You Can Never Completely Escape The Sensuous, Semitropical Pull Of Charleston And Her Marshes.

Mountain Ranges

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The University Of South Carolina Has Always Played A Role In My Life And The Intellectual Life Of South Carolina.

The Great Teachers Fill You Up With Hope And Shower You With A Thousand Reasons To Embrace All Aspects Of Life.

I Was The Only Person In The World Who Thought It Was A Military Duty To Appear To Be In A Good Mood.

If Smallness Was Fortune, Then I Had Come Across A Treasure, Infinitesimal And Beyond Value. I Felt Lucky. You Had To Decide What Was Estimable And Precious In Your Life And Set Out To Find It. The Objects You Valued Defined You.

Craziness Attacks The Softest Eyes And Hamstrings The Gentlest Flanks.

Teach Them The Quiet Words Of Kindness, To Live Beyond Themselves. Urge Them Toward Excellence, Drive Them Toward Gentleness, Pull Them Deep Into Yourself, Pull Them Upward Toward Manhood, But Softly Like An Angel Arranging Clouds. Let Your Spirit Move Through Them Softly.

Rape Is A Crime Against Sleep And Memory; It's Afterimage Imprints Itself Like An Irreversible Negative From The Camera Obscura Of Dreams.

Every Woman I Had Ever Met Who Walked Through The World Appraised And Classified By An Extraordinary Physicality Had Also Received The Keys To An Unbearable Solitude. It Was The Coefficient Of Their Beauty, The Price They Had To Pay.

Walking The Streets Of Charleston In The Late Afternoons Of August Was Like Walking Through Gauze Or Inhaling Damaged Silk.

I've Always Believed That Dreams Were Both The Love Letters And The Hate Mail Of The Subconscious.

... Silence (can) Be The Most Eloquent Form Of Lying.

(you) Don't Leave The Chicken To Watch The Feed.

My Wound Is Geography. It Is Also My Anchorage, My Port Of Call.

We Children Sat Transfixed Before That Moon Our Mother Had Called Forth From The Waters. When The Moon Had Reached Its Deepest Silver, My Sister, Savannah, Though Only Three, Cried Aloud To Our Mother, To Luke And Me, To The River And The Moon, "oh, Mama, Do It Again!" And I Had My Earliest Memory.

The Pursuit Of Greatness Means That Laziness Has No Place In Your Life.

It Is An Art Form To Hate New York City Properly. So Far I Have Always Been A Featherweight Debunker Of New York; It Takes Too Much Energy And Endurance To Record The Infinite Number Of Ways The City Offends Me.

Honor Is The Presence Of God In Man.

Presence Of God

Here's What I Love: When A Great Writer Turns Me Into A Jew From Chicago, A Lesbian Out Of South Carolina, Or A Black Woman Moving Into A Subway Entrance In Harlem. Turn Me Into Something Else, Writers Of The World. Make Me Muslim, Heretic, Hermaphrodite. Put Me Into A Crusader's Armor, A Cardinal's Vestments. Let Me Feel The Pygmy's Heartbeat, The Queen's Breast, The Torturer's Pleasure, The Nile's Taste, Or The Nomad's Thirst. Tell Me Everything That I Must Know. Hold Nothing Back.

Baseball Fans Love Numbers. They Love To Swirl Them Around Their Mouths Like Bordeaux Wine.

It Is The Secret Life That Sustains Me Now, And As I Reach The Top Of That Bridge I Say It In A Whisper, I Say It As A Prayer, As Regret, And As Praise. I Can't Tell You Why I Do It Or What It Means, But Each Night When I Drive Toward My Southern Home And My Southern Life, I Whisper These Words: 'lowenstein, Lowenstein.

Will His Work Survive? Alas, I Worry That It Will Not. As An American Liberal With Impeccable Credentials, I Would Like To Say That Political Correctness Is Going To Kill American Liberalism If It Is Not Fought To The Death By People Like Me For The Dangers It Represents To Free Speech, To The Exchange Of Ideas, To Openheartedness, Or To The Spirit Of Art Itself. Political Correctness Has A Stranglehold On Academia, On Feminism, And On The Media. It Is A Form Of Both Madness And Maggotry, And Has Already Silenced The Voices Of Writers Like James Dicky Across The Land.

I Wanted To Become The Seeker, The Aroused And Passionate Explorer, And It Was Better To Go At It Knowing Nothing At All, Always Choosing The Unmarked Bottle, Always Choosing Your Own Unproven Method, Armed With Nothing But Faith And A Belief In Astonishment.

Knowing Nothing

Her Laughter Was A Shiny Thing, Like Pewter Flung High In The Air.

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I've Always Found Paranoia To Be A Perfectly Defensible Position.

Anyone Who Knows Me Well Must Understand And Be Sympathetic To My Genuine Need To Be My Own Greatest Hero. It Is Not A Flaw Of Character; It Is A Catastrophe.

Because She Deserved My Tears If Anyone On Earth Ever Did. I Could Feel The Tears Within Me, Undiscovered, And Untouched In Their Inland Sea. Those Tears Had Been With Me Always.

A Recipe Is A Story That Ends With A Good Meal.

I Was Born And Raised On A Carolina Sea Island And I Carried The Sunshine Of The Low-country, Inked In Dark Gold, On My Back And Shoulders.

Reading Is The Most Rewarding Form Of Exile And The Most Necessary Discipline For Novelists Who Burn With The Ambition To Get Better.

A Story Untold Could Be The One That Kills You.

Losing Prepares You For The Heartbreak, Setback, And The Tragedy That You Will Encounter In The World More Than Winning Ever Can. By Licking Your Wounds You Learn How To Avoid Getting Wounded The Next Time.

Some Things Don’t Mix. Some Things Don’t Mix At All, But Sometimes In Life You Have To Take The Risk.

Sometimes In Life

There Is No Downside To Winning. It Feels Forever Fabulous.

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