American - Writer | October 26, 1945 - March 4, 2016
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
FamilyRisksGroupGroundVessel
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.
LifeAngelWorldReadingMy Life
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.'
GreatStylePerfectionConstruction
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.
HomeSoulManMeEnthusiasmLong
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.
LifePassionJourneyGreatMyself
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.
FearGreatMeTryingMy OwnOwn
I could not bear to think that I wrote a five-hundred page novel just because I needed to love my father.
LoveFatherThinkPageJust Because
Love came in wounded and frantic ways to my dismaying family.
FamilyLoveWoundedWaysCame
I still get weepy when I see a father being nice to his child. It so affects me.
FatherChildMeNiceSeeI See
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.'
MotherParentingParentsMeLook
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Pat Conroy quotes