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" 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.' "

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" Every industry is going to be affected (by the aging population). This creates tremendous opportunities and tremendous challenges. "

Pat Conroy

Opportunities

Aging

Challenges

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

" 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

" I have found human nature a bit contradictory in my living of it. Human life is incredibly strange. "

" 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 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. "

" I don't believe in happy families. "

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

" I could not bear to think that I wrote a five-hundred page novel just because I needed to love my father. "

" 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. "

" I still write in long hand. I type like a chimpanzee. "

Pat Conroy

Hand

Long

" To Southerners like my mother, 'Gone With the Wind' was not just a book; it was an answer, a clenched fist raised to the North, an anthem of defiance. "

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

" My father's violence is the central fact of my art and my life. "

" Writing has never been that simple for me. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" I hated my father long before I knew there was a word for hate. "

" I told my kids when they were little, 'Look, kids, your mother and I are screwing you up somehow. We don't understand how, or we wouldn't do it. But we're parents. So somehow we're damaging you, and I want you to know that early. So just ignore me when I go to that part of my parenting.' "

Pat Conroy

Know

Parents

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

" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

Pat Conroy

Imagination

Writing

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