My mother thought of my father as half barbarian and half blunt instrument, and she isolated him from his children.
Pat ConroyShe thought she brought a gift of compassion for those exhausted souls who had not received a chest portion from the people who raised them. If compassion and therapy did not work, she could always send her patients to the local pharmacy for drugs.
Pat ConroyOnce he had drawn first blood, his war against the property of the state lost all its moral resonance.
Pat ConroyWe wait for the tortoises to come. We wait for that lady who walks them. Thatโs how art works. Itโs never a jackrabbit, or a racehorse. Itโs the tortoises that hold all the secrets. Weโve got to be patient enough to wait for them.
Pat Conroy...when the words pour out of you just right, you understand that these sentences are all part of a river flowing out of your own distant, hidden ranges, and all words become the dissolving snow that feeds your mountain streams forever. The language locks itself in the icy slopes of our own high passes, and it is up to us, the writers, to melt the glaciers within us. When these glaciers break off, we get to call them novels, the changelings of our burning spirits, our life's work.
Pat Conroy