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ed19dad
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The tide was a poem that only time could create, and I watched it stream and brim and makes its steady dash homeward, to the ocean.
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Pat Conroy |
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e59b5ef
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We began our life together at a moment of natural self-pity and defeat that left an inimitable impression on both of us. The rejection chastened me and let me know my proper place in the grand scheme of things. It was the last time I would ever make a move that required boldness or a leap of the imagination. I became tentative, suspicious, and dull. I learned to hold my tongue and mark my trail behind me and to look to the future with a war..
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defeatism
self-pity
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Pat Conroy |
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fd0e4a6
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As time passed from solstice to mild solstice in those occluded zones of my early childhood, I played beneath the distracted majesty of my mother's blue-eyed gaze. With her eyes on me I felt as if I were being studied by flowers.
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Pat Conroy |
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2b851fc
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The body's a funny thing. It's so full of surprises that it makes conventional wisdom seem silly.
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Pat Conroy |
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fd24729
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Love has no weapons; it has no fists. Love does not bruise, nor does it draw blood.
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Pat Conroy |
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e6a7f86
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The whole construct of my universe was a cunning, entangled network of lies. I had to start over again. I knew that. And I had to begin by ceasing to loathe myself for my difference from the rest.
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Pat Conroy |
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6cf25fb
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I taught Leah how to tell where we were in the Campo by using her sense of smell. The south side was glazed with the smell of slain fish and no amount of water or broom-work could ever eliminate the tincture of ammonia scenting that part of the piazza. The fish had written their names in those stones. But so had the young lambs and the coffee beans and torn arugula and the glistening tiers of citrus and the bread baking that produced a gold..
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Pat Conroy |
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b8f98b0
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I lit a cigarette and began puffing on it as I drank one quick beer after another. I was neither a drinker nor a smoker nor a fighter, but I had planned to be all three on this day.
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Pat Conroy |
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91911a8
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It all makes more sense when I'm out here alone," he smiled. "I can talk myself into anything."
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metacognition
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Pat Conroy |
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58d7505
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Take the local, take the express, don't get off till you reach success -- Sidney Rosen (Prince Of Tides)
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Pat Conroy |
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3782afb
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I can forgive almost any crime if a great story is left in its wake.
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relationships
storytelling
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Pat Conroy |
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f29ab44
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I had the need to be the good master, but definitely the master, no matter what the cost.
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Pat Conroy |
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c076b65
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I was born in the age of "alas"." --
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nostalgia
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Pat Conroy |
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7f467d0
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I've always admired people who give accurate directions, and the tribe is small.
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discipleshiphim
directions
hospitality
communication
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Pat Conroy |
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04fa7ac
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I had declared in public my desire to be a writer ... I wanted to develop a curiosity that was oceanic and insatiable as well as a desire to learn and use every word in the English language that didn't sound pretentious or ditzy.
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Pat Conroy |
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d371f8d
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A good movie had never once affected me in the same life-changing way a good book could. Books had the power to alter my view of the world forever. A great movie could change my perceptions for a day.
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movies
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Pat Conroy |
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9d9090f
|
Like many men and women who make egregious and irretrievable mistakes with their own children, she would redeem herself by becoming the perfect grandmother.
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Pat Conroy |
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5b6f3b5
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In our modern age, there are writers who have heaped scorn on the very idea of the primacy of story. I'd rather warm my hands on a sunlit ice floe than try to coax fire from the books they carve from glaciers.
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story
writing
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Pat Conroy |
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f42d984
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No man or woman has the right to humiliate children, even in the sacrosanct name of education. No one has the right to beat children with leather straps, even under the sacred auspices of all school boards in the world.
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Pat Conroy |
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11f3867
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Writers of the world, if you've got a story, I want to hear it. I promise it will follow me to my last breath. My soul will dance with pleasure, and it'll change the quality of all my waking hours. You will hearten me and brace me up for the hard days as they enter my life on the prowl. I reach for a story to save my own life. Always. It clears the way for me and makes me resistant to all the false promises signified by the ring of power. I..
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Pat Conroy |
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22615d5
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She pronounced each word carefully, as though she was tasting fruit. The words of her poems were a most private and fragrant orchard.
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Pat Conroy |
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c6541d5
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The only way I could endure being a coward was if I was the only one who knew it.
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courage
pride
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Pat Conroy |
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4791d3c
|
I loved county fairs in the South. It was hard to believe that anything could be so consistently cheap and showy and vulgar year after year. each year I thought that at least one class act would force its way into a booth or sideshow, but I was always mistaken. The lure of the fair was the perfect harmony of its joyous decadence, its burned-out dishonored vulgarity, its riot of colors and smells, its jangling, tawdry music, and its wicked g..
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Pat Conroy |
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7d7e214
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I learned that if I could read, I could cook. I surprised myself I like it.
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servant-leader
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Pat Conroy |
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0f81e20
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An author must gorge himself on ten thousand images to select the magical one that can define a piece of the world in a way one has never considered before.
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writing
perception
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Pat Conroy |
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1b9f43f
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Every athlete learns by theft and mimicry.
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plagiarism
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Pat Conroy |
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4da01f7
|
I dislike poor teachers. They are criminals to me. I've seen so much cruelty toward children. I've seen so many children not given the opportunity to live up to their potential as human beings.
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Pat Conroy |
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db964ef
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it had been a winter of deadening seriousness, when all the illusions and bright dreams of my early twenties had withered and died. I did not yet have the interior resources to dream new dreams; I was far too busy mourning the death of the old ones and wondering how I was to survive without them. I was sure I could replace them somehow , but was not sure I could restore their brassy luster or dazzling impress .
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dreams
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Pat Conroy |
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1292373
|
I had come to Charleston as a young boy, a lonely visitor slouching through its well-tended streets, a young boy, lean and grassy, who grew fluent in his devotion and appreciation of that city's inestimable charm. I was a boy there and saw things through the eyes of a boy for the last time. The boy was dying and I wanted to leave him in the silent lanes South of Broad.I would leave him with no regrets except that I had not stopped to honor ..
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Pat Conroy |
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03922ed
|
College was to teach me that I was one of life's journeymen, eager to excel but lacking the requisite gifts.
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education
maturity
humility
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Pat Conroy |
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1123d66
|
I loved these salt rivers more than I loved the sea; I loved the movement of tides more than I loved the fury of surf. Something in me was congruent with this land, something affirmed when I witnessed the startled, piping rush of shrimp or the flash of starlight on the scales of mullet. I could feel myself relax and change whenever I returned to the lowcountry and saw the vast green expanses of marsh, feminine as lace, delicate as calligrap..
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nature
south-carolina
southern-fiction
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Pat Conroy |
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68c389c
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Losing well was a gift, but winning well is this stuff of the authentic manhood.
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magnanimity
humility
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Pat Conroy |
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59fa807
|
The words "I love you" could contain all the bloodthirsty despair of the abattoir, all the hopelessness of the most isolated, frozen gulag, all the lurid sadness of death row."
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manipulation
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Pat Conroy |
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405aaf2
|
And in that instant was born the terrible awareness that life eventually broke every man, but in different ways and at different times.
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Pat Conroy |
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1df42a7
|
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.
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Pat Conroy |
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cd6adac
|
Even then, her interior life was far more important to her than her external one.
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Pat Conroy |
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dc6343e
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It both surprised and angered me that {they} had reached a consensus of agreement against me. The way I looked at the world, enemies criticized and friends affirmed.
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Pat Conroy |
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84de06c
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Christ must do a lot of puking when he reflects upon the good works done in his name.
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Pat Conroy |
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15df791
|
Few people understood the exceptional role the civil rights movement had on the white boys and girls of the South. Bill Clinton would never have become who he was without the shining example of Martin Luther King. The same is true of Jimmy Carter and Fritz Hollings and Richard and Joe Riley. Imagine this: you're a little white kid and you watch firehoses turned on people who don't seem to be hurting anyone, and fierce dogs being tuned on yo..
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freedom
pat-conroy
good-and-bad
martin-luther-king-jr
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Pat Conroy |
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e2f53af
|
According to Margaret Mitchell, the Civil War destroyed a civilization of unsurpassable amenity, chivalry, and grace.
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Pat Conroy |
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7f402c1
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General Clark walked the campus like a retired deity and ignored the general run of cadets.
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Pat Conroy |
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ccac1cf
|
I wear the ring.
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Pat Conroy |