Quote

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.

Pat Conroy

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Pat Conroy
Age: 70 †
Born: 1945
Born: October 26
Died: 2016
Died: March 4
Author
Basketball Player
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Atlanta
Georgia
Patrick Conroy
Donald Patrick Conroy
Good
Visible
Uniform
Thoughts
Profoundly
Clear
Fitting
Language
Uniforms
Making
Tight
Difficult
Agony
Form
Involves
Lucid
Writing
Turning
Forcing

More quotes by Pat Conroy

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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.
Pat Conroy
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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.
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My soul grazes like a lamb on the beauty of an indrawn tide.
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Evil would always come to me disguised in systems and dignified by law.
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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.
Pat Conroy
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She thought she brought a gift of compassion for those exhausted souls who had not received a chest portion from the people who raised them. If compassion and therapy did not work, she could always send her patients to the local pharmacy for drugs.
Pat Conroy
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I was born to be a point guard, but not a very good one.
Pat Conroy
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When men talk about the agony of being men, they can never quite get away from the recurrent theme of self-pity. And when women talk about being women, they can never quite get away from the recurrent theme of blaming men.
Pat Conroy
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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.
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Happiness is an accident of nature, a beautiful and flawless aberration.
Pat Conroy
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Craziness attacks the softest eyes and hamstrings the gentlest flanks.
Pat Conroy
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I still write in long hand. I type like a chimpanzee.
Pat Conroy
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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.
Pat Conroy
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I don't believe in happy families.
Pat Conroy
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I realized early that unless you're willing to kill the innocent, you can't win.
Pat Conroy
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I wrote to explain my own life to myself, stories are the vessels I use to interpret the world to myself.
Pat Conroy
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Know this. I think you could be special if you only thought there was anything special about yourself.
Pat Conroy
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The safe places could only be visited they could only grant a momentary intuition of sanctuary. The moment always came when we had to return to our real life to face the wounds and grief indigenous to our homr by the river.
Pat Conroy
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The only way I could endure being a coward was if I was the only one who knew it.
Pat Conroy
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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.
Pat Conroy