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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.

-Pat Conroy

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It Is The Secret

Pat Conroy

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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.

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My Attraction To Story Is A Ceaseless Current That Runs Through The Center Of Me. My Inexhaustible Ardor For Reading Seems Connected To My Hunger For Storylines That Show Up In Both Books And In The Great Tumbling Chaos Of Life.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

I Still Write In Long Hand. I Type Like A Chimpanzee.

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.

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Red Hook Road Made Me Happy, And Happy To Be Alive. It Took Me Out Of My Home On The Coast Of South Carolina, Placed Me In The Town Along Red Hook Road, And Changed Me The Way Good Books Always Do.

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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

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

She Had Awakened Something In Him That Had Slumbered Far Too Long. Not Only Did He Feel Passion, He Felt The Return Of Hope.

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.

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.

In Families, There Are No Crimes Beyond Forgiveness.

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.

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

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.

I Can't Pass A Bookstore Without Slipping Inside, Looking For The Next Book That Will Burn My Hand When I Touch Its Jacket, Or Hand Me Over A Promissory Note Of Such Immense Power That It Contains The Formula That Will Change Everything About Me.

There Is No Teacher More Discriminating Or Transforming Than Loss.

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.

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.

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

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

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Presence Of God

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The Only Word For Goodness Is Goodness, And It Is Not Enough.

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

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

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.

A Story Untold Could Be The One That Kills You.

It Did Not Look Like The Work Of God, But It Might Have Represented The Handicraft Of A God With A Joyous Sense Of Humor, A Dancing God Who Loved Mischief As Much As Prayer, And Playfulness As Much As Mischief.

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.

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.

The World Of Literature Has Everything In It, And It Refuses To Leave

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

Her Library Would Have Been Valuable To A Bibliophile Except She Treated Her Books Execrably. I Would Rarely Open A Volume That She Had Not Desecrated By Underlining Her Favorite Sections With A Ball-point Pen. Once I Had Told Her That I Would Rather See A Museum Bombed Than A Book Underlined, But She Dismissed My Argument As Mere Sentimentality. She Marked Her Books So That Stunning Images And Ideas Would Not Be Lost To Her.

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

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

Good Writing Is The Hardest Form Of Thinking.

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

When I Was 5 Years Old, My Mother Read Me 'gone With The Wind' At Night, Before I Went To Bed. I Remember Her Reading Almost All Year.

... The Wing Of A Fly Is Proof Enough Of The Existence Of God For Me.

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

Good Writing ... Involves The Agony Of Turning Profoundly Difficult Thoughts Into Lucid Form, Then Forcing Them Into The Tight-fitting Uniform Of Language, Making Them Visible And Clear.

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

My Father Wouldn't Let Me Take Typing In Childhood.

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

Humanity Is Best Described As Inhumanity.

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

My Mother Raised Me To Be A Writer.

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 Most Powerful Words In English Are, 'tell Me A Story.'

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

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

Once You Have Traveled, The Voyage Never Ends.

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

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

Do You Think That Hemingway Knew He Was A Writer At Twenty Years Old? No, He Did Not. Or Fitzgerald, Or Wolfe. This Is A Difficult Concept To Grasp. Hemingway Didn't Know He Was Ernest Hemingway When He Was A Young Man. Faulkner Didn't Know He Was William Faulkner. But They Had To Take The First Step. They Had To Call Themselves Writers. That Is The First Revolutionary Act A Writer Has To Make. It Takes Courage. But It's Necessary

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.

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

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.

Here's What I Want From A Book, What I Demand, What I Pray For When I Take Up A Novel And Begin To Read The First Sentence: I Want Everything And Nothing Less, The Full Measure Of A Writer's Heart. I Want A Novel So Poetic That I Do Not Have To Turn To The Standby Anthologies Of Poetry To Satisfy That Itch For Music, For Perfection And Economy Of Phrasing, For Exactness Of Tone. Then, Too, I Want A Book So Filled With Story And Character That I Read Page After Page Without Thinking Of Food Or Drink Because A Writer Has Possessed Me, Crazed With An Unappeasable Thirst To Know What Happens Next.

I Had Come To A Place Where I Was Meant To Be. I Don't Mean Anything So Prosaic As A Sense Of Coming Home. This Was Different, Very Different. It Was Like Arriving At A Place Much Safer Than Home.

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.

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

Every Athlete Learns By Theft And Mimicry.

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