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" I've met many, many writers who say they would never write about their family, never write about people they did not totally make up. But that is not the composition of my character. "

Pat Conroy

Family

People

Say

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" I've never cackled with laughter at a single line I've ever written. None of it has given me pleasure. "

Pat Conroy

Pleasure

Never

" The University of South Carolina has always played a role in my life and the intellectual life of South Carolina. "

" When my novel 'Beach Music' came out in 1995, I had included a couple of recipes in the book and had tried to impart some of my love of Roman cuisine and the restaurants of Rome. "

" Writing has never been that simple for me. "

" I would love to see young writers come out of college and know there is a possibility to be a novelist. "

" I became a novelist because of 'Gone With the Wind,' or more precisely, my mother raised me up to be a 'Southern' novelist, with a strong emphasis on the word 'Southern' because 'Gone With the Wind' set my mother's imagination ablaze when she was a young girl growing up in Atlanta. "

" My father wouldn't let me take typing in childhood. "

" I wrote a piece for the school literary magazine that now makes me think: 'My God in Heaven, this is just the worst drivel.' "

" There's always a version of me who is the narrator. And I make myself look better than other people. "

" Let me now praise the American writer James Dickey. In 1970, his novel 'Deliverance' was published. I found it to be 278 pages that approached perfection. Its tightness of construction and assuredness of style reminded me of 'The Great Gatsby.' "

" I mark the reading of 'Look Homeward, Angel' as one of the pivotal events of my life. It starts off with the single greatest, knock-your-socks-off first page I have ever come across in my careful reading of world literature. "

" When I bought a collection of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, I returned home with a bright enthusiasm to begin the long march into the Russian soul. Though I've failed to read either man to completion, they both helped me to imagine that my fictional South Carolina was as vast a literary acreage as their Russia. "

" Writing is more about imagination than anything else. I fell in love with words. I fell in love with storytelling. "

Pat Conroy

Imagination

Writing

" Though Nathalie Dupree did not remember much about my presence in her class, it marked me forever. I remain her enthusiast, her evangelist, her acolyte, and her grateful student. She taught me that cooking and storytelling make the most delightful coconspirators. "

Pat Conroy

She

Remember

" Love came in wounded and frantic ways to my dismaying family. "

" I love books about treks and journeys into the unknown. "

" I loved my parents... but that can never change the fact that my father's violence ruined my childhood. "

" The great thing about all my siblings is we all agree we had a horrendous childhood. It's not like it doesn't affect us now; it affects us every day, in everything we do. "

" Without music, life is a journey through a desert. "

" A recipe is a story that ends with a good meal. "

" I'm fascinated by the people I grew up with and the mistakes I made - and God, I have screwed up. I like writing about where it all went off course. "

" There are other writers who try for subtle and minimalists effects, but I don't travel in that tribe. "

" A family is too frail a vessel to contain the risks of all the warring impulses expressed when such a group meets on common ground. "

" It's an article of faith that the novels I've loved will live inside me forever. "

" I think that my mother, Frances Dorothy Peck, modeled her whole life on that of Scarlett O'Hara. "

" My great fear of being attacked or trivialized by my contemporaries made me concentrate on what I was trying to do as a writer. It forced me to draw some conclusions that were my own. "

" Fear is the major cargo that American writers must stow away when the writing life calls them into carefully chosen ranks. "

" I think I learned about the relationship between books and life from Margaret Mitchell. "

" The most powerful words in English are 'Tell me a story,' words that are intimately related to the complexity of history, the origins of language, the continuity of the species, the taproot of our humanity, our singularity, and art itself. "

" 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. "