“I dislike poor teachers. They are criminals to me. I’ve seen so much cruelty toward children. I’ve seen so many children not given the opportunity to live up to their potential as human beings.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“No man or woman has the right to humiliate children, even in the sacrosanct name of education. No one has the right to beat children with leather straps, even under the sacred auspices of all school boards in the world.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“And in that instant was born the terrible awareness that life eventually broke every man, but in different ways and at different times.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“Lightning flashed around the island; thunder played its favorite game of scaring the crap out of all the shivering mortals on the earth below.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“the forlorn appearance assumed by all houses that have lost their people.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“It was funny how we thought education to be the great gilded key which would solve all problems, eliminate all poverty and disease, eradicate differences between social classes, and bring the children of okra-planters up to par with the children of emperors.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“One noteworthy thing about South Carolina is the quality of school-bus drivers in the state. To qualify for a bus license one must have reached puberty and be able to recite the alphabet without stuttering.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“I learned that politicians are not supposed to help people. They simply listen to people, nod their heads painfully, commiserate at proper intervals, promise to do all they can, and then do nothing. It was very instructive. I could probably have enlisted more action from a bleached jellyfish washed ashore in a seasonal storm.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“Christ must do a lot of puking when he reflects upon the good works done in his name.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“Christ must do a lot of puking when he reflects upon the good works done in his name. Anyway,”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“Unlike most women I have known, she placed no value on shallow pretensions or hypocritical displays of gentility.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“life was good, but it was hard; we would prepare to meet it head on, but we would enjoy the preparation.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“I reveled in class discussion and the Socratic method of drawing substance out of calcified minds untrained to think.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“The teacher must always be on the attack, looking for new ideas, changing worn-out tactics, and never, ever falling into patterns that lead to student ennui.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“We Shall Overcome” by Pete Seeger. I remember that moment with crystal clarity and I comprehend it as a turning point in my life: a moment terrible in its illumination of a toad in my soul, an ugliness so pervasive that it seemed my insides were vomit.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“You the white teacher. I thought you one of the boys.” Then she paused. “You gonna drink it?” “Yep.” “Teachers drink?” “Yep.” “That’s good. Oh Gawd, that’s so good. I got some gin in that there paper bag when you finish.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“My pre-Yamacraw theory of teaching held several sacred tenets, among these being that the teacher must always maintain an air of insanity, or of eccentricity out of control, if he is to catch and hold the attention of his students. The teacher must always be on the attack, looking for new ideas, changing worn-out tactics, and never, ever falling into patterns that lead to student ennui.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“Everyone was surprised and enraged by the usurpation of this inalienable Caucasian right to park one’s ass on a leather stool and drink a Coke.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“Son, you can do more good at Yamacraw than you could ever do in the Peace Corps. And you would be helping Americans, Pat. And I, for one, think it’s very important to help Americans.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“My poor boat poked along the waterway with the blinding speed of a manatee.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“Among the peoples of the world I am not universally admired for the bell-like clarity of my diction. Words slide out of my mouth like fat fish. Having lived my life in various parts of Georgia, Virginia, and the Carolinas and having been sired by a gruff-talking Marine from Chicago and a grits-and-gravy honey from Rome, Georgia, what has remained is an indefinable nonspeech, flavored subtly with a nonaccent, and decipherable to no one, black or white, on the American continent.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“Bernie could talk a Baptist into burning a Bible,”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“I was becoming convinced that the world was a colorful, variegated grab bag full of bastards. But”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“that life was good, but it was hard; we would prepare to meet it head on, but we would enjoy the preparation.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“Think instead about children. People. Human beings. Feel for once that education is about people—not figures.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“Mrs. Brown, whose primary job on the island”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“Teaching is a record of failures. But the glory of teaching is in the attempt.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
“pervasive part of the island culture”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Water is Wide
Pat Conroy
Born place: in Atlanta, Georgia, The United States
Born date October 26, 1945
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“Be’... – disse lei, rigirandosi compiaciuta sulla schiena. – Mi piace mangiare roba buona, bistecche e patate rosolate, cose cosí. Mi piace leggere libri e riviste, viaggiare in treno di notte e quelle volte che ho viaggiato in aereo –. Fece una pausa. – Naturalmente non sto elencando le cose in ordine di preferenza. Dovrei pensarci meglio per elencarle in ordine di preferenza. Però mi piace, viaggiare in aereo. C’è un momento quando ci si stacca da terra in cui hai la sensazione che qualsiasi cosa succeda, andrà bene –. Gli passò una gamba sopra la caviglia. – Mi piace stare alzata fino a notte alta e poi restare a letto fino a tardi il giorno dopo. Vorrei tanto potessimo farlo sempre, invece che una volta ogni tanto. E poi mi piace il sesso. Mi piace essere toccata di tanto in tanto quando non me l’aspetto. Mi piace andare al cinema e farmi una birra con le amiche dopo. Mi piace avere amiche. Janice Hendricks mi piace un sacco. Mi piacerebbe andare a ballare almeno una volta a settimana. E avere sempre dei bei vestiti. Mi piacerebbe poter comprare bei vestiti anche per i bambini ogni volta che gli servono, senza dover aspettare. Per esempio Laurie ha bisogno di un vestito nuovo adesso per Pasqua. E mi piacerebbe comprare a Gary un completino o qualcosa del genere. Ormai è grandicello. Vorrei che anche tu avessi un completo nuovo. Anzi, tu ne hai veramente piú bisogno di Gary. E mi piacerebbe che avessimo una casa tutta nostra. Vorrei piantarla di traslocare ogni anno, due anni al massimo. Ma soprattutto vorrei tanto che io e te potessimo vivere una buona vita onesta, senza doverci sempre preoccupare dei conti, dei soldi e roba del genere. Ma tu dormi, – disse. – No che non dormo, – disse lui. – Non riesco a pensare ad altre cose. Ora tocca a te. Dimmi che cosa piacerebbe a te. – Non so. Un sacco di cose, – bofonchiò lui. – Be’, dimmele. Si fa tanto per parlare, no? – Vorrei tanto che mi lasciassi in pace, Nan –. Si rigirò dalla sua parte e lasciò penzolare il braccio oltre il bordo.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories
“I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently?”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There
“Enlightenment is understanding that there is nowhere to go, nothing to do, and nobody you have to be except exactly who you're being right now.”
― Neale Donald Walsch, quote from Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue, Book 1
“The sun has riz, and the sun has set, and here we is in Roosha yet.”
― Nelson DeMille, quote from The Charm School
“and they got there in an instant. So basically, whenever you’re looking for a solution, you are feeling positive emotion—and whenever you’re looking at a problem, you’re feeling negative emotion, which, as you know, never gets us anywhere. But once you take the focus off yourself and your wants, and instead turn it toward how getting what you want might also benefit someone else, well then, you can’t help but succeed,” she says, voice soft and sweet. “That’s the key behind any success.”
― Alyson Noel, quote from Night Star
The Fellowship of th...
Invisible
The Infernal Devices...
Unraveling
Too Late
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