Quotes from The Great Santini

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

“Always believe in things and people that bring you pleasure. What good does it do to throw those things out the window?”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Great Santini

“On the road, he was alive, vibrant, moving. It didn’t afford the freedom of a jet plane flying through a clear sky, but a highway offered something almost as profound, an entry into the secret regions of the earth where towns with foreign, unrecallable names were violated once, then forgotten for all time.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Great Santini

“Good taste is not something you can be taught. It’s not something you obtain in a store or go to college to learn.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Great Santini

“Somewhere, the billion dreams of the town since its origin stirred in a maelstrom far from the reach of the shrimpers’ nets. Old dreams still burned with the power of their one night on earth, but burned deep and forbidden in regions denied to men.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Great Santini

“What kind of world is it, Ben thought, that lets its coaches die without his boys around him, buying him Cokes, calling him by his first name, and rubbing his shoulder with Atomic Balm? He died without a face in a room I never saw without my kisses in the stained gauze or without my prayers entering the center of his pain. But worst of all, O God, you let him die, let Coach Murphy die, let Dave die, without my thanks, my thanks, my thanks.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Great Santini

“Sergeant Hicks seemed to be laid out in squares as though he were constructed out of cinder blocks. There was a hardness to his body that made his uniform appear to be little more than a paint job. He walked as if each step he took was driving a hated enemy toward a precipice.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Great Santini

“Suddenly, Coach Spinks’s face mellowed. There was a dissociation of form and substance. His eyes glistened; his gaze became beatific. “Let us pray,” he said and all the heads on the team dropped floorward as though they were puppets strung to the same wire. “O sweet Jesus, we come again to ask your blessings and your forgiveness for our many trespasses against you and our fellow neighbor. We are playin’ West Charleston High School tonight, Lord, but there’s no need to tell you that since you knew about it two or three million years before I did. We ask, good Jesus, not that we beat West Charleston High but that we do our best before our God, our family, and our country. We do ask, Lord, if you see it befitting, that we score a point or two more than West Charleston even though I know that Coach Warners is a God-fearin’ man and a deacon in the Baptist Church besides. But you know as well as I, Lord, he’s one of the mouthiest so-and-so’s that ever wore socks. I’m also aware, dear Jesus, that their players are all clean cut boys and also pleasant to your sight. We don’t want to ask for anything special, Lord, but help my rebounders get off their feet. Help Pinkie and Jim Don control their tempers. Give Philip and Art a little more temper. And get Ben to quit throwin’ those big city behind-the-back passes. And, Lord, please help this high school if I got to make any substitutions. My scrubs is good boys but they’ve been havin’ a devil of a time puttin’ that ball into the hole. The real thing I want to ask, Lord, is that all these boys make the first team in that great game of life. If they make mistakes, Lord, blow the whistle because you’re the great referee. Call time out and bring them to center court for another jump ball. Don’t let them go out of bounds, Lord. If they bust a play, make ’em run wind-sprints and figure eights but stay with ’em, Lord. Coach ’em all the way to the championship of life. A-men.” “A-men,” the team echoed in relief.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Great Santini

“beneficent realization that he was a stranger no longer, that he belonged”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Great Santini

“They love their families with their hearts and souls and they wage war against them to prove it.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Great Santini

“I’ve never trusted a man who put cream or sugar in his coffee. Just like I never really trusted a man who put Coca-Cola in his bourbon.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Great Santini

“Here, open wide and let it slide,” he said, tilting a half-shell into Ben’s mouth. The oyster hit Ben’s mouth. It felt warm, salty, and had the consistency of loose phlegm. For a moment, Ben thought he was going to vomit. Somehow, he got the animal down his throat.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Great Santini

“This time Ben swallowed faster as though he were ingesting his own saliva. Speed, he thought, was the secret behind the enigma of why men would torture themselves by placing these raw quivering bivalves on their tongues. He couldn’t rid his mind of the image that he was eating shelled snot.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Great Santini

“Then Sister Loretta got to her point. “There are some boys in here who probably play with themselves at night. Abuse themselves. I am sure all of you know what I mean.” “Yes, Sister,” Ben thought, hating her, “I know what you mean.” “Always remember that your bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost and when you abuse yourself sexually, you are also abusing the house of God. Scientists call this vile habit masturbation, but it is more aptly referred to as self-abuse,” she said, glaring into the collective face of adolescence which suffered before her. “Self-abuse,” she repeated. “Just think of these two words and you will never be tempted to engage in this again. God knows if you abuse yourself. He watches you. He sees you do it. It disgusts him. It disgusts him so much that he calls his mother, the Blessed Virgin, to his side to watch the hideous spectacle. Then he calls his angels to watch and all the Saints in heaven. Thousands upon thousands of Saints and Angels are watching you every hour of the day. They especially watch you when you are alone at night. They see the dirty things you do with your hands and private parts. All of heaven: God, Jesus, the Holy Ghost, the Blessed Mother, the Seraphim, and all the other Angels scream out their hatred of you, chant and sing that they despise you as they watch you flaunt yourself and weaken yourself with your filthy acts.” As Ben listened in pitched horror at Sister Loretta’s portraiture of heaven’s entire populace jeering at some thin lad’s whacking off in the privacy of his room, not knowing he was being observed by the entire celestial civilization, Ben thought of himself, his sinfulness, and his innocence. He had received no preparation—none—for his entry into the arena of a Catholic adolescence”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Great Santini

“Lillian Meecham was a stunningly beautiful woman of thirty-seven. Time had encircled her softly, enriched and deepened her beauty as the years tiptoed past her. Her hair was long, a dark luxuriant red, swept to one side of her head and half covering her right eye, a haughty, insouciant mane that added a touch of ingenuous naughtiness to a face that otherwise had the innocence of a Madonna. Her face was a reflection of many things; a sum of many transfiguring, even violent events. Her smile was joyous, but the joy was fringed with grief. Her lips were full and passionate, her nose, mischievous and arrogant. In her face, hardening experiences were registered in soft places. Pain was exiled to the nearly invisible lines shooting out from the eyes. Grief radiated in tight stars from both sides of her mouth. These wrinkles were the only indications that the face had suffered and that time had left at least a few footprints in passage. It was a kind face; a face that sons could love, husbands worship, and daughters envy. Her body was firm, ripe, and full. It had rich curves that invited the secret scholarship of men’s eyes. She had borne four children and suffered three miscarriages, but her stomach was as hard and flat as her hand.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Great Santini

“beware the law behind closed doors, the yellow-toothed men behind silver badges who had been betrayed by their chromosomes and their birth. She would talk of power as a yeast that could activate a malevolence that no force on earth could overcome once it had begun. Beware”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Great Santini

About the author

Popular quotes

“Genevieve hunched her shoulders against the storm of sound and fury and struggled to imagine a worse sort of hell. Widdershins, of course, seemed perfectly happy, but Widdershins was weird.”
― quote from Thief's Covenant

“Though frankly… Tarnapol, as he is called, is beginning to seem as imaginary as my Zuckermans anyway, or at least as detached from the memoir-ist – his revelations coming to seem like still another “useful fiction,” and not because I am telling lies. I am trying to keep to the facts. Maybe all I’m saying is that words, being words, only approximate the real thing, and so no matter how close I come, I only come close.”
― Philip Roth, quote from My Life as a Man

“time. Every night I’d wake up to her howls. Turtle, who slept at the”
― Judy Blume, quote from Superfudge

“Quentin found it hard not to blame her doctors, and especially her father, for not being open-minded enough to at least consider the possibility that there had been nothing wrong with Diana from the beginning. But they hadn't. Faced with the inexplicable, with experiences and behaviors they didn't understand and were frightened by, they had acted swiftly, with all the supposed knowledge of modern-day medicine, to "fix" her "problems."

Even before she hit puberty, for Christ's sake.

And they had left her only half alive. A pale, colorless, vague, and passionless copy of the Diana she was meant to be.

Christ, no wonder she looked out on the world with wary, suspicious eyes. Finally off all the mind-numbing medications, Diana was clearheaded for the first time since childhood. Truly aware for the first time of the world around her. And not just aware, but painfully alert, with the raw-nerved sensitivity of most psychics.

She knew, now. No matter what she was willing to admit aloud or even consciously, she knew now that she had been kept half alive, less than that. Knew that those she had trusted most had betrayed that trust, even if they had done it in the name of love and concern and with all good intentions. They hadn't kept her safe, they had kept her doped up and compliant. They had sought to hammer away all the sharp, unique edges that made her Diana.

So she could be healthy. Like everybody else.

It had been in her voice when she'd told him, a haunted awareness of all she'd lost.

"I'm thirty-three now. You do the math."

He thought it must have been like waking from a coma or a hazy dream to find that everything that had gone before had not been real. The world had turned, time had moved on... and Diana had lost years.

Years.”
― Kay Hooper, quote from Chill of Fear

“Acceptance of the inevitable, a sign of a wise man.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from Deal Breaker

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.