I just met Pat Conroy. He was very personable, gracious, and funny as hell. For example, when I told him I teach psychology he stated that he taught it for two years himself. And all he had to do to teach the course was go through the members of his family. A paranoid schizophrenic here, a manic depressive there, etc.... He also asked how my mother was doing after I informed him that she just retired as a English teacher. I said, "keeping her self busy so as not to go stir crazy." He stated I know the feeling as his grandmother used to say. "get me the frack out of this house." Above are a few pictures from the event and below a few qoutes of the author that I like. His parting words to me were, "Berry, you live in the most beautiful city on earth." I responded, "Pat, I know."
"My mother, Southern to the bone, once told me, "All Southern literature can be
summed up in these words: 'On the night the hogs ate Willie, Mama died when she heard what Daddy did to sister."
"Since the day I was born, I have been worried that heaven would never be half as beautiful as Charleston, the city formed where two rivers meet in ecstasy to place a harbor and a bay and an exit to the world."
"To my mother, a library was a palace of desire masquerading in a wilderness of books. She distributed books to me a though ther were communion wafers."
"You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up."
"Man wonders but God decides when to kill the Prince of Tides."
Glad you got to see him
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