Quotes from Pat Conroy’s works

“To describe our growing up in the low country of South Carolina, I would have to take you to the marsh on a spring day, flush the great blue heron from its silent occupation, scatter marsh hens as we sink to our knees in mud, open you an oyster with a pocketknife and feed it to you from the shell and say, ‘There. That taste. That’s the taste of my childhood.’ ”

“The largest crowd in the history of Beaufort High School showed up for the Chicora game and the pep band put everyone into a state of near frenzy as my team burst out of the locker room … in this one glorious night, I lifted right out of myself and turned into the kind of basketball player who could change the way a town felt about itself.”

“I was not the same boy who had awakened to reveille that morning. That boy was a stranger to me now and he could never be recalled. The system had transformed me into an original astonished creature … they were going to change all of us into men by reducing us to children again, by breaking down every single vestige of civilization and society that we had brought to protect and sustain us. They would tame us like beasts of the field before they remade us in their own fierce image.”

“They turned the corner and soon were driving along a high, grassy bluff that sloped down to a glistening river that flowed through the main part of town. Live oak trees, festooned with cool scarves of Spanish Moss, and gnarled by a century of storms, loomed over the street. On the left, large white houses with long columns and graceful verandas ruled the approach to the river with mute elegance. Each house was a massive tribute to days long past. In one of the houses, drawling conspirators had planned the secession from the Union; in another Sherman himself had slept after his long march to the sea.”

“As a boy, in my own backyard I could catch a basket of blue crabs, a string of flounder, a dozen redfish, or a net full of white shrimp. All this I could do in a city enchanting enough to charm cobras out of baskets, one so corniced and filigreed and elaborate that it leaves strangers awed and natives self-satisfied. In its shadows you can find metalwork as delicate as lace and spiral staircases as elaborate as yachts. In the secrecy of its gardens you can discover jasmine and camellias and hundreds of other plants that look embroidered and stolen from the Garden of Eden for the sheer love of richness and the joy of stealing from the gods.”

“The boat ride to Yamacraw became a celebration of sorts. It was a time when I became aware of tides ebbing and flooding in accordance with the transcendental clockwork of the universe; a time of the pale, wafer-thin moon in the early morning sky and of the last star to vanish with the coming of the sun over green waters.”

“Senator Ernest Hollings held court on one side of the huge expanse of grassy yard that led from the back of the house to the water, and his Republican counterpart, Strom Thurmond, kissed the hands of every lady in sight as the air filled up with the smell of a feast bad for the arteries and good for the soul. Dupree had a pot of Frogmore stew simmering near the line of picnic tables and I could smell the pork sausage, mingling with the fresh corn and shrimp, cutting the air with its special tang of barnyard, field, and saltwater creek.”

“Looking back, I can see how strange I must have seemed to a town like Beaufort, a white Southern boy who was a pain-in-the-ass liberal who believed in every part of the civil rights movement, welcomed the stirrings of feminism, and protested against the Vietnam War.”

“I’m afraid if I stay here I’ll end up like Mr. Fruit. Crazy or feeble-minded, begging for sandwiches at the back doors of restaurants and bars. I want to be in a place where if I go crazy for a while it will pass unnoticed. This town has driven me nuts by the sheer effort it’s taken to pretend I’m just like everyone else.”

“Back in the street, I made my way past the familiar stores whose very existence was threatened by the opening of shopping centers and Wal-Marts. I nodded to people I had known all my life … the best thing about a small town is that you grow up knowing everyone. It is also the worst thing.”

“At sunset we watch the saltwater tides rising with perfect congruence to the rising moon. No matter the time of day, the creek spreads out in the thrown coinage of sunset, bright as a centerpiece in the transcendental green of the great salt marsh. Everything we notice is a timepiece calling out the muffled drumroll of our own mortal days. I’ve come home to the place I was always writing about. Fishermen wave as they come in with their catches of sheepshead or triggerfish. Battery Creek returns to the sea, passing Parris Island, where Marines on the rifle range are practicing their accuracy skills. The Beaufort River sweetens the flow as it moves through the town where the mansions look like the summer homes of the creatures of a misused tarot deck. Born homeless, I’ve tried to make Beaufort, South Carolina, my own. To me, these islands didn’t exist until I found them. I invented the marshes, the oyster banks, and the ink-dark creeks that divide the marshes until salt water runs up against solid land … in the distance, the air fills with warplanes. The sound is soothing to me, the chamber music of my boyhood. I embrace it as something that belongs to me.”

“I lived with the terrible knowledge that one day I would be an old man still waiting for my real life to start. Already, I pitied that old man.”

This story was originally published March 4, 2016 at 11:41 PM with the headline "Quotes from Pat Conroy’s works."