Pat Conroy

You must appreciate beauty for it to endure [...]

Here is all I ask of a book—give me everything. Everything, and don't leave out a single word.

I take account of my life and find that I have lived a lot and learned very little.

My passion for eating springs from a childhood not deprived of food but deprived of good food.

A library could show you everything if you knew where to look.

Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.

Humanity is best described as inhumanity.

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.

But no one walks out of his family without reprisals: a family is too disciplined an army to offer compassion to its deserters.

Fantasy is one of the soul's brighter porcelains.

I do not 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.

The water was pure and cold and came out of the Apennines tasting like snow melted in the hands of a pretty girl.