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76e5a50
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He was one of those rare men who are capable of being fully in love only once in their lives.
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men
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Pat Conroy |
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36af83a
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When men talk about the agony of being men, they can never quite get away from the recurrent theme of self-pity. And when women talk about being women, they can never quite get away from the recurrent theme of blaming men.
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men-and-women
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Pat Conroy |
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66061c7
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I'd be a conservative if I'd never met any. They're selfish, mean-spirited, egocentric, reactionary, and boring.
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Pat Conroy |
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315fabb
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Writing poetry and reading books causes brain damage.
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poetry
writing
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Pat Conroy |
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e4f1a55
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We children sat transfixed before that moon our mother had called forth from the waters. When the moon had reached its deepest silver, my sister, Savannah, though only three, cried aloud to our mother, to Luke and me, to the river and the moon, "Oh, Mama, do it again!" And I had my earliest memory."
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Pat Conroy |
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814182c
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In families, there are no crimes beyond forgiveness.
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Pat Conroy |
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9754f27
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Some things don't mix. Some things don't mix at all, but sometimes in life you have to take the risk.
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Pat Conroy |
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1e41cbf
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Even today, I hunt for the fabulous books that will change me utterly. I find myself happiest in the middle of a book which I forget that I am reading, but am instead immersed in a made-up life lived at the highest pitch.
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Pat Conroy |
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10b3d1b
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Evil would always come to me disguised in systems and dignified by law.
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conformity
law
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Pat Conroy |
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646ffd8
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I had come to a place where I was meant to be. I don't mean anything so prosaic as a sense of coming home. This was different, very different. It was like arriving at a place much safer than home.
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heaven
home
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Pat Conroy |
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370893a
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I lived with the terrible knowledge that one day I would be an old man still waiting for my real life to start. Already, I pitied that old man.
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potential
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Pat Conroy |
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3dec9e6
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It enclosed us in its laceries as we watched the moon spill across the Atlantic like wine from an overturned glass. With the light all around us, we felt secret in that moon-infused water like pearls forming in the soft tissues of oysters.
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Pat Conroy |
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c25a0b7
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Honor is the presence of God in man.
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honor
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Pat Conroy |
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1664fcb
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Loss invites reflection and reformulating and a change of strategies. Loss hurts and bleeds and aches. Loss is always ready to call out your name in the night. Loss follows you home and taunts you at the breakfast table, follows you to work in the morning. You have to make accommodations and broker deals to soften the rabbit punches that loss brings to your daily life. You have to take the word "loser" and add it to your resume and walk aro..
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loss
lesson-from-lossing
loser-quotes
losing-quotes
loss-quotes
life-lesson
losing
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Pat Conroy |
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a7c5c98
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Every woman I had ever met who walked through the world appraised and classified by an extraordinary physicality had also received the keys to an unbearable solitude. It was the coefficient of their beauty, the price they had to pay.
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Pat Conroy |
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ef08519
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It's impossible to explain to a Yankee what `tacky' is. They simply have no word for it up north, but my God, do they ever need one.
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yankee
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Pat Conroy |
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732e199
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Love's action. It isn't talk and it never has been.
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Pat Conroy |
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49561d8
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It was growing dark on this long southern evening, and suddenly, at the exact point her finger had indicated, the moon lifted a forehead of stunning gold above the horizon, lifted straight out of filigreed, light-intoxicated clouds that lay on the skyline in attendant veils. Behind us, the sun was setting in a simultaneous congruent withdrawal and the river turned to flame in a quiet duel of gold....The new gold of moon astonishing and asc..
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memories
nature
moon
south-carolina
sunset
sun
twilight
childhood
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Pat Conroy |
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e672e8e
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Know this. I think you could be special if you only thought there was anything special about yourself.
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Pat Conroy |
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d6a0991
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Here's what I love: when a great writer turns me into a Jew from Chicago, a lesbian out of South Carolina, or a black woman moving into a subway entrance in Harlem. Turn me into something else, writers of the world. Make me Muslim, heretic, hermaphrodite. Put me into a crusader's armor, a cardinal's vestments. Let me feel the pygmy's heartbeat, the queen's breast, the torturer's pleasure, the Nile's taste, or the nomad's thirst. Tell me eve..
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Pat Conroy |
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eb045f3
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I was the only person in the world who thought it was a military duty to appear to be in a good mood.
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smiling
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Pat Conroy |
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bd1ce46
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Then another porpoise broke the water and rolled toward us. A third and fourth porpoise neared. The visitation was something so rare and perfect that we knew by instinct not to speak--and then as quickly as they had come, the porpoises moved away from us...Each of us would remember that all during our lives. It was the purest moment of freedom and headlong exhilaration that I had ever felt. A wordless covenant was set, and I would go back i..
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carolina
tranquility
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Pat Conroy |
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7af9b5a
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Because she deserved my tears if anyone on earth ever did. I could feel the tears within me, undiscovered, and untouched in their inland sea. Those tears had been with me always.
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Pat Conroy |
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6613024
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She had so mastered the strategies of camouflage that her own history had seemed a series of well-placed mirrors that kept her hidden from herself.
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Pat Conroy |
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db636c8
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Cameras are a lifesaver for very shy people who have nowhere else to hide. Behind a lens they can disguise the fact that they have nothing to say to strangers.
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strangers
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Pat Conroy |
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1adc6ae
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Like everything else, love's not worth much without some action to back it up.
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Pat Conroy |
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e8ef908
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We've pretended too much in our family, Luke, and hidden far too much. I think we're all going to pay a high price for our inability to face the truth.
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Pat Conroy |
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4113931
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There was a time when a new deputy tried to teach Mr. Fruit about the difference between a red and a green light, but Mr. Fruit had resisted all efforts to reorder what he had been doing perfectly well for many years. He had not only monitored the comings and goings of the town, his presence softened the ingrained evil that flourished along the invisible margins of the town's consciousness. Any community can be judged in its humanity or cor..
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kindness
pat-conroy
southern
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Pat Conroy |
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6e7e47b
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But, as I watch this film, I often think that the boy did not know what he was really running toward, that it was not the end zone which awaited him. Somewhere in that ten second dash the running boy turned to metaphor and the older man could see it where the boy couldn not. He would be good at running, always good at it, and he would always run away from the things that hurt him, from the people who loved him, and from the friends empowere..
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Pat Conroy |
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e84b950
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Looking around, I thought the human species was in fine shape and tried to think of something more beautiful than women and couldn't come up with a thing. The propagation of the species was a dance of total joy.
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Pat Conroy |
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e2b3cce
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If smallness was fortune, then I had come across a treasure, infinitesimal and beyond value. I felt lucky. You had to decide what was estimable and precious in your life and set out to find it. The objects you valued defined you.
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Pat Conroy |
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34326e1
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I will take you down my own avenue of remembrance, which winds among the hazards and shadows of my single year as a plebe. I cannot come to this story in full voice. I want to speak for the boys who were violated by this school, the ones who left ashamed and broken and dishonored, who departed from the Institute with wounds and bitter grievances. I want also to speak for the triumphant boys who took everything the system could throw at them..
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Pat Conroy |
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308ecfd
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The human soul can always use a new tradition. Sometimes we require them.
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tradition
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Pat Conroy |
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8c5497a
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Except for memory, time would have no meaning at all.
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Pat Conroy |
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d944289
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There were far worse strategies in life than to try to make each aspect of one's existence a minor work of art.
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detail
excellence
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Pat Conroy |
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dbbd813
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If your parents disapprove of you and are cunning with their disapproval, there will never come a new dawn when you can become convinced of your own value. There is no fixing a damaged childhood. The best you can hope for is to make the sucker float.
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Pat Conroy |
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1fa40d9
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The English language on her tongue became a smoke-screen, without her eyes changing expression in the least.
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Pat Conroy |
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67133e7
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I would always be a better hater of things and institutions than a lover of them.
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rebellion
complaining
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Pat Conroy |
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37ea803
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I have come to revere words like "democracy" and "freedom," the right to vote, the incomprehensibly beautiful origins of my country, and the grandeur of the extraordinary vision of the founding fathers. Do I not see America's flaws? Of course I do. But I now can honor her basic, incorruptible virtues, the ones that let me walk the streets screaming my ass off that my country had no idea what it was doing in South Vietnam. . . . I have come ..
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Pat Conroy |
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3ee6d92
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I realize words are never enough; they stutter and cleave to the roof of my mouth.
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Pat Conroy |
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88360fb
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I was trying to unravel the complicated trigonometry of the radical thought that silence could make up the greatest lie ever told.
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silence
secrets
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Pat Conroy |
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e60be89
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The fruit tasted foreign but indigenous, like sunlight a tree had changed through patience.
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Pat Conroy |
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f24e240
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Time moves funny and it's hard to pin down. Occasionally, time offers you a hundred opportunities to do the right thing. Sometimes, it gives you only one chance.
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Pat Conroy |
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21cb28e
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Memory in these incomparable streets, in mosaics of pain and sweetness, was clear to me now, a unity at last. I remembered small and unimportant things from the past: the whispers of roommates during thunderstorms, the smell of brass polish on my fingertips, the first swim at Folly Beach in April, lightning over the Atlantic, shelling oysters at Bowen's Island during a rare Carolina snowstorm, pigeons strutting across the graveyard at St. P..
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oysters
south-carolina
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Pat Conroy |