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" 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. "
Pat Conroy
My Own
Own
Fear
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" I would love to see young writers come out of college and know there is a possibility to be a novelist. "
Pat Conroy
Out
College
Young
" 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
" Without music, life is a journey through a desert. "
Pat Conroy
Life
Desert
Music
" 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.' "
Pat Conroy
Style
Perfection
Great
" I wrote a piece for the school literary magazine that now makes me think: 'My God in Heaven, this is just the worst drivel.' "
Pat Conroy
Now
School
Think
" 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. "
Pat Conroy
Night
Reading
Wind
" 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. "
Pat Conroy
Soul
Man
Long
" 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. "
Pat Conroy
My Life
Angel
World
" I loved my parents... but that can never change the fact that my father's violence ruined my childhood. "
Pat Conroy
Fact
Parents
Father
" It's an article of faith that the novels I've loved will live inside me forever. "
Pat Conroy
Inside
Faith
Will
" 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. "
Pat Conroy
Work
Audience
Good
" A novel is a great act of passion and intellect, carpentry and largess. From the very beginning, I wrote to explain my own life to myself, and I invited readers who chose to make the journey with me to join me on the high wire. "
Pat Conroy
Journey
Life
Great
" Writing has never been that simple for me. "
Pat Conroy
Simple
Writing
Been
" I think that my mother, Frances Dorothy Peck, modeled her whole life on that of Scarlett O'Hara. "
Pat Conroy
Her
Life
Mother
" I hated my father long before I knew there was a word for hate. "
Pat Conroy
Long
Before
Hate
" I don't believe in happy families. "
Pat Conroy
Happy
Believe
Families
" The University of South Carolina has always played a role in my life and the intellectual life of South Carolina. "
Pat Conroy
Always
My Life
Life
" Love came in wounded and frantic ways to my dismaying family. "
Pat Conroy
Love
Wounded
Ways
" 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
Me
" I love books about treks and journeys into the unknown. "
Pat Conroy
Unknown
About
I Love
" 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. "
Pat Conroy
Too
Group
Family
" I still get weepy when I see a father being nice to his child. It so affects me. "
Pat Conroy
Child
Being Nice
See
" Fear is the major cargo that American writers must stow away when the writing life calls them into carefully chosen ranks. "
Pat Conroy
Away
American
Writing
" I meet kids now who become novelists, poets, write for the theater and movies, who were simply inspired by what they saw during the Spoleto Festival. "
Pat Conroy
Inspired
Who
Now
" A recipe is a story that ends with a good meal. "
Pat Conroy
Story
Good
Good Meal
" I think I learned about the relationship between books and life from Margaret Mitchell. "
Pat Conroy
About
Relationship
Life
" I only hope to do well enough before I die to have a house as big as my rich Uncle Ed and Aunt Carole. "
Pat Conroy
Uncle
Die
House
" Writing is more about imagination than anything else. I fell in love with words. I fell in love with storytelling. "
Pat Conroy
Imagination
More
Writing
" 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. "
Pat Conroy
Story
Art
History
" My father wouldn't let me take typing in childhood. "
Pat Conroy
Childhood
Father
Take