# The Water Is Wide

- Author: [Pat Conroy](https://www.leafyquotes.com/pat-conroy.md)
- Quotes: 9
- Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/pat-conroy/the-water-is-wide

## Quotes

> During the entire period of my banishment and trial, I wanted to tell Piedmont and Bennington that what was happening between us was not confined to Beaufort, South Carolina. I wanted to tell them about the river that was rising quickly, flooding the marshes and threatening the dry land. I wanted them to know that their day was ending. When I saw them at the trial, I knew that they were the soldiers of the rear guard, captains of a doomed army retreating through the snow and praying that the quick, dark wolves, waiting in the cold, would come no closer. They were old men and could not accept the new sun rising out of the strange waters. The world was very different now.

p. 311 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/pat-conroy/the-water-is-wide/during-the-entire.md)

> Christ must do a lot of puking when he reflects upon the good works done in his name.

p. 49 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/pat-conroy/the-water-is-wide/christ-must-do-a-lot.md)

> Lightning flashed around the island; thunder played its favorite game of scaring the crap out of all the shivering mortals on the earth below.

p. 24 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/pat-conroy/the-water-is-wide/lightning-flashed-around.md)

> The Southern school superintendent is a kind of remote deity who breathes the purer air of Mount Parnassus. The teachers see him only on those august occasions when they need to be reminded of the nobility of their calling. The powers of a superintendent are considerable. He hires and fires, manipulates the board of education, handles a staggering amount of money, and maintains the precarious existence of the status quo.

p. 11 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/pat-conroy/the-water-is-wide/the-southern-school.md)

> Teaching is a record of failures. But the glory of teaching is in the attempt.

p. 285 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/pat-conroy/the-water-is-wide/teaching-is-a-record.md)

> And in that instant was born the terrible awareness that life eventually broke every man, but in different ways and at different times.

p. 196 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/pat-conroy/the-water-is-wide/and-in-that.md)

> I learned that politicians are not supposed to help people. They simply listen to people, nod their heads painfully, commiserate at proper intervals, promise to do all they can, and then do nothing. It was very instructive. I could probably have enlisted more action from a bleached jellyfish washed ashore in a seasonal storm.

p. 278 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/pat-conroy/the-water-is-wide/i-learned-that.md)

> There were these deep, serious thoughts I sometimes had to drive from my head like flocks of pesky starlings. I was too pragmatic and impatient to let such thoughts flog me into impotence, yet I sincerely needed a working philosophy on which to hang my hat. After the Halloween trip, one began to form and crystallize without my knowledge, and when I finally acknowledged its presence, it was already a part of me: simply, that life was good, but it was hard; we would prepare to meet it head on, but we would enjoy the preparation.

p. 158 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/pat-conroy/the-water-is-wide/there-were-these.md)

> The South of humanity and goodness is slowly rising out of the fallen temple of hatred and white man's nationalism. The town retains her die-hards and nigger-haters and always will. Yet they grow older and crankier with each passing day. When Beaufort digs another four hundred holes in her plentiful grave-yards, deposits there the rouged and elderly corpses, and covers them with the sandy, lowcountry soil, then another whole army of the Old South will be silenced and not heard from again. The religion of the Confederacy and apartheid will one day be subdued by the passage of years. The land will be the final arbiter of human conflict; no matter how intense the conflict, the victory of earth and grave will be complete.

p. 313 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/pat-conroy/the-water-is-wide/the-south-of-humanity.md)