Pat Conroy Quotes

A lot of people up North, they think everybody from the South is married to their sister and has seen a UFO. I told them, 'I'm just dating my sister and couldn't swear that it wasn't a weather balloon.'

I have cousins in North Carolina who talk in that old Southern style of 'yakking,' if you will. All the black men in my life when I was a boy talked that way, and I love that kind of talk.

I had family in Carolina who were very hood and talked differently in this sort of Southern cadence.

I bring a lot of 'y'all' up to New York with me.

But I am Northern myself, and there is a certain rhythm of Northern speech that is very comical: that combination of the choice of language and the speech rhythm, which in itself is very funny.

In India, when someone calls you sexy, they don't mean it as a compliment; it has derogatory connotations.

I'm happy that I know how to speak 'Southern.' I spent a lot of time in Alabama throughout my life. I even lived there for part of junior high and high school, so I learned the true beauty and mastery of the Southern dialect. 'Y'all' is one of the greatest and most useful words ever invented.

How do you get 'feng shui' out of 'thoughtful'?

For through the South the custom still commands The gentleman to kiss the lady's hands.

I don't know what the word is in Austrian.

I would never speak about specifics in my own relationships because I think it's tacky. If you seriously want to know, listen to the music.

I guess I'm just courtly until people get in my way. You'll find most Southerners are like that.

The English talked with inflected phrases. One phrase to mean everything.

I'm no linguist, but I have been told that in the Russian language, there isn't even a word for freedom.

Black culture is very difficult to explain to people who don't have any direct contact with it.

Now, now. Southern ladies don’t French-kiss and tell.

They [the English] have a special word, "civil," for what is elsewhere merely ordinary politeness.

It was always so hot, and everyone was so polite, and everything was all surface but underneath it was like a bomb waiting to go off. I always felt that way about the South, that beneath the smiles and southern hospitality and politeness were a lot of guns and liquor and secrets.

Whereas Europeans generally pronounce my name the right way ('Ni-klows Wirt'), Americans invariably mangle it into 'Nick-les Worth'. This is to say that Europeans call me by name, but Americans call me by value.

I'm the last of the truly tacky women. I do trash with flash and sleaze with ease.

We're not going to have a party when half of our friends... can't do that thing we're doing. We're not going to ask them to come celebrate a right they don't have. That's just tacky! Forget like anything else, it's like really tacky for us

They flat their fifths, we drink ours.

Did you ever see so many pee-wee hats, Carl?" "They're beanies." "They call them pee-wees in Brooklyn." "But I'm not in Brooklyn." "But you're still a Brooklynite." "I wouldn't want that to get around, Annie." "You don't mean that, Carl." "Ah, we might as well call them beanies, Annie." "Why?" "When in Rome do as the Romans do." "Do they call them beanies in Rome?" she asked artlessly. "This is the silliest conversation.

When you go apartment-hunting in the South, you encounter little old ladies who ask you if you use strong drink. In New York you encounter paranoids who wonder if you will commit suicide--not that they care; what they worry about is blood on their fresh paint, a dubious smell in the hallway, or a hole in the awning as you pass through on your way to the sidewalk. The Southerner who moves to any part of the country has problems, but the culture shock that attacks the Southerner who moves North is almost indescribable.

I decided to deflect her attitude by giving a long, Southern answer. I come from people who know how to draw things out. Annoy a Southerner, and we will drain away the moments of your life with our slow, detailed replies until you are nothing but a husk of your former self and that much closer to death.