Pat Conroy

“The sun, red and enormous began to sink into the western sky. And simultaneously the moon began to rise on the other side of the river, in it's own glorious shade of red coming up out of the trees like a rustic fire bird. The sun and the moon seemed to acknowledge each other, and they moved in both apposition and concordance in a breathtaking dance of light across the oaks and the palms. My father watched them, and I thought he would cry again. He had returned to the sea... and his heart was a low country heart.”

The most powerful words in English are 'Tell me a story.'

Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers.

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 could 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 empowered to save him. But where do we run when there are no crowds, no lights, no end zones? Where does a man run? the coach said, studying the films of himself as a boy. Where can a man run when he has lost the excuse of games? Where can a man run or where can he hide when he looks behind him and sees that he is only pursued by himself?

My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call.

Teach them the quiet verbs of kindness, to live beyond themselves. Urge them toward excellence, drive them toward gentleness, pull them deep into yourself, pull them upward toward manhood, but softly like an angel arranging clouds. Let your spirit move through them softly.

There is such a thing as too much beauty in a woman and it is often a burden as crippling as homeliness and far more dangerous. It takes much luck and integrity to survive the gift of perfect beauty, and its impermanence is its most cunning betrayal.

The only word for goodness is goodness, and it is not enough.

A family is one of nature's solubles; it dissolves in time like salt in rainwater.

In families, there are no crimes beyond forgiveness.

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.

There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory.

These are the quicksilver moments of my childhood I cannot remember entirely. Irresistible and emblematic, I can recall them only in fragments and shivers of the heart.

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 ascendant, the depleted gold of sunset extinguishing itself in the long westward slide, it was the old dance of days in the Carolina marshes, the breathtaking death of days before the eyes of children, until the sun vanished, its final signature a ribbon of bullion strung across the tops of water oaks.