The Prince of Tides

by Pat Conroy

“There are more Jews in New York than there are in Israel,” she said.

“The same thing I think about it now, Tom,” she said. “I think it’s the most backward, reactionary, and dangerous part of the country.”

It’s been interesting to come to New York, Lowenstein, and to be hated because I am a white southerner. It’s rather bracing and refreshing, but odd. It makes me understand your theory of paranoia.”

“Fern Hill” by Dylan Thomas

divagation

“It’s simply, the last stage of life. The most interesting stage, I imagine,”

“We all got to turn up our toes someday, Tom,”

unctuous

“Johnny was the meanest son of a bitch that ever wore shoelaces, Winthrop,”

Henry Wingo could never shake his image as the archetype of the swaggering bully.

They have a Colleton League just so they can keep people like you out of it.

No, Mom has to have what she can’t get. That’s the only thing that’s ever meant anything to her.”

vellum.

You’re the only person I know who couldn’t grow kudzu.”

But my racism issued forth from my passionate need to conform rather than from any serious credo or system of belief.

“I’m not as big as you are, Oscar. You’d beat me up if we had a fight. Then Luke would come hunting for you and rearrange your face anyway. I’m just skipping the step where I get beat up.”

black sons and daughters of lordly image, who have tested their resources in the bitter milieus of white kids trained from birth to love Jesus and to hate niggers with all their hearts.

He had to account for a thirty-year reign of mild terror and he brought to the task no talent for contrition.

One thing I know, Dad, is that you can’t help being a southern asshole. You were to the manner born.”

I wondered if it was just in the house of the dying that you became so acutely aware of the presence of clocks.

“Mrs. Newbury, how could you let a woman into your husband’s bed who couldn’t get into your fucking cookbook?” I asked.

concept of common law first began in England, the king himself was not allowed to cross the threshold of the poorest peasant’s house without permission.

“The old Mom technique,” Savannah said, laughing. “Truth is only what you choose to remember.”

“Situational faith,”

There are no ideas in the South, just barbecue.

anapests

but she’s a Newbury now and she’s farting through silk and there’s always a hint of caviar on her breath.”

Whenever Big Money goes up against the Environment, Big Money always wins. It’s an American law, like the right of free assembly.

I realized early that unless you’re willing to kill the innocent, you can’t win. You can’t even be noticed.”

There’s no word in the language I revere more than teacher. None. My heart sings when a kid refers to me as his teacher and it always has. I’ve honored myself and the entire family of man by becoming one.”