conroy

“What's important is that a story changes every time you say it out loud. When you put it on paper, it can never change. But the more times you tell it, the more changes will occur. A story is a living thing; it moves and shifts” 
― Pat Conroy, South of Broad

“The world of literature has everything in it, and it refuses to leave 

anything out. I have read like a man on fire my whole life because the 

genius of English teachers touched me with the dazzling beauty of language. 

Because of them I rode with Don Quixote and danced with Anna Karenina at a 

ball in St. Petersburg and lassoed a steer in "Lonesome Dove" and had 

nightmares about slavery in "Beloved" and walked the streets of Dublin in 

"Ulysses" and made up a hundred stories in the Arabian nights and saw my 

mother killed by a baseball in "A Prayer for Owen Meany." I've been in ten 

thousand cities and have introduced myself to a hundred thousand strangers 

in my exuberant reading career, all because I listened to my fabulous 

English teachers and soaked up every single thing those magnificent men and 

women had to give. I cherish and praise them and thank them for finding me 

when I was a boy and presenting me with the precious gift of the English 

language. ” 

― Pat Conroy