Lisa > Lisa's Quotes

“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 corruption by how it manages to accommodate the Mr. Fruits of the world. Colleton simply adjusted itself to Mr. Fruit’s harmonies and ordinations. He did whatever he felt was needed and he did it with style. “That’s the Southern way” my grandmother said. “That’s the nice way.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“Perfect doesn't just mean happy. Perfect can have lots of different parts. - Niles.”
― Pat Conroy, South of Broad

“I’ve never had anyone’s approval, so I’ve learned to live without it.”
― Pat Conroy, The Great Santini

“I do not have any other way of saying it. I think it happens but once and only to the very young when it feels like your skin could ignite at the mere touch of another person. You get to love like that but once.”
― Pat Conroy, Beach Music

“American men are allotted just as many tears as American women. But because we are forbidden to shed them, we die long before women do, with our hearts exploding or our blood pressure rising or our livers eaten away by alcohol because that lake of grief inside us has no outlet. We, men, die because our faces were not watered enough.”
― Pat Conroy, Beach Music

“I don’t know why it is that I have always been happier thinking of somewhere I have been or wanted to go, than where I am at the time. I find it difficult to be happy in the present.”
― Pat Conroy, Beach Music

“My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“Man wonders but God decides
When to kill the Prince of Tides.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“A family is one of nature's solubles; it dissolves in time like salt in rainwater.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“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.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“There are no ideas in the South, just barbecue.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“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.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“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.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“I realized early that unless you're willing to kill the innocent, you can't win.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“The safe places could only be visited; they could only grant a momentary intuition of sanctuary. The moment always came when we had to return to our real life to face the wounds and grief indigenous to our homr by the river.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“Anyone who knows me well must understand and be sympathetic to my genuine need to be my own greatest hero. It is not a flaw of character; it is a catastrophe.”
― Pat Conroy, The Lords of Discipline