“Music could ache and hurt, that beautiful music was a place a suffering man could hide.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from Beach Music
“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, quote from Beach Music
“No story is a straight line. The geometry of a human life is too imperfect and complex, too distorted by the laughter of time and the bewildering intricacies of fate to admit the straight line into its system of laws.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“I could bear the memory, but I could not bear the music that made the memory such a killing thing.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“Fantasy is one of the soul's brighter porcelains.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“Her laughter was a shiny thing, like pewter flung high in the air.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“We set down feasts for each other and treated our love with tongues of fire. Our bodies were fields of wonder to us.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“Carolina beach music," Dupree said, coming up on the porch. "The holiest sound on earth.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“Men are prisoners of their genitalia and women are the keepers of the keys to paradise.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“But no one walks out of his family without reprisals: a family is too disciplined an army to offer compassion to its deserters.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“I'd be a conservative if I'd never met any. They're selfish, mean-spirited, egocentric, reactionary, and boring.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“Writing poetry and reading books causes brain damage.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“It enclosed us in its laceries as we watched the moon spill across the Atlantic like wine from an overturned glass. With the light all around us, we felt secret in that moon-infused water like pearls forming in the soft tissues of oysters.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“She had so mastered the strategies of camouflage that her own history had seemed a series of well-placed mirrors that kept her hidden from herself.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“Because she deserved my tears if anyone on earth ever did. I could feel the tears within me, undiscovered, and untouched in their inland sea. Those tears had been with me always.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“…Then another porpoise broke the water and rolled toward us. A third and fourth porpoise neared. The visitation was something so rare and perfect that we knew by instinct not to speak—and then as quickly as they had come, the porpoises moved away from us…Each of us would remember that all during our lives. It was the purest moment of freedom and headlong exhilaration that I had ever felt. A wordless covenant was set, and I would go back in my imagination, and return to where happiness seemed so easy to touch.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“Love's action. It isn't talk and it never has been.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“Cameras are a lifesaver for very shy people who have nowhere else to hide. Behind a lens they can disguise the fact that they have nothing to say to strangers.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“Like everything else, love's not worth much without some action to back it up.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“Looking around, I thought the human species was in fine shape and tried to think of something more beautiful than women and couldn't come up with a thing. The propagation of the species was a dance of total joy.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“Except for memory, time would have no meaning at all.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“The English language on her tongue became a smoke-screen, without her eyes changing expression in the least.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“One can learn anything, anything at all, I thought, if provided by a gifted and passionate teacher.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“Words are pretty, but anyone can talk. Pay attention to the people who perform.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“The pursuit of greatness means that laziness has no place in your life.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“Paranoia has a sharper taste if the danger is real.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“And I was glad she had the camera as a fence to protect herself, an excuse to be invisible. Cameras are a lifesaver for the very shy people who have nowhere else to hide.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“Her view of men was one-dimensional, but not inaccurate: men were prisoners of their genitalia and women were the keepers of the keys to paradise.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from Beach Music
“He touched the sword he had taken from the ambush. "Aside from this and the trio of juggling stones, I've nothing but the clothes on my back."
Well then, tomorrow we'll go-"
"No. Prince Ryne told me to make sure you stay in the manor."
"It's just into town to buy you a few things. Surely there won't be any danger at the market." I sensed a softening. "And we'll take along Saul or Odd."
No. We'll send one of the caregivers with a shopping list," Flea said.
"Hey, that's..."
He waited.
I huffed. "A good idea. But don't be so smug. You're not going to win every argument."
"Oh, yes, I am."
"Oh, no, you're not."
Flea straightened to his full height. When did he get so tall? He rested his hands on his hips. "I am. Prince Ryne trusted me with the task of keeping you safe. And I'm not going to disappoint him."
I crossed my arms. "You sound like Kerrick."
"Thank you."
Uh-huh. You do know I disobeyed almost all of his orders. Right?" I suppressed a grin.
"I do. But I'm smarter than Kerrick."
"You are?"
Oh, yes. I know the magic word."
"And what would that be?"
"Please.”
― Maria V. Snyder, quote from Scent of Magic
“One never gets the same summer twice.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from Wideacre
“I'm not going anywhere. I hope. It's been an adventure. We took some casualties over the years. Things got broken. Things got lost.
But I wouldn't have missed it for the world.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
“The thing about late-night cookery was that it made sense at the time. It always had some logic behind it. It just wasn’t the kind of logic you’d use around midday.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from The Last Continent
“If she were (looking into my eyes), she’d have seen how absolutely floored I was the first time I finally, truly saw her. The clouds moved at just the right moment, fully lighting her face by the moon. She was dazzlingly beautiful. Underneath thick lashes were eyes blue as ice, something cool to balance out the flames in her hair. I felt a strange flutter in my chest, like the glow of a fireplace or the warmth of the afternoon. It stayed there for a moment, playing with my pulse.”
― Kiera Cass, quote from The Prince
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