“The choices I didn’t make are almost as ruinous as the ones I did.”
What a lovely gift my good friend Linda gave me for Christmas. A Lowcountry Heart is a fine collection of the last bits of writing by Pat Conroy, who died in the spring of 2016. His friends and family gathered a few of his blog posts, speeches, and letters and put them together in a lovely tribute to this big-hearted, story-loving, low-country man. Since it’s Pat Conroy, and I can’t ever hope to match his words, I’ve just picked a few quotes to share with you.
On teaching:
“Though I’ve never met a teacher who was not happy in retirement, I rarely meet one who thinks that their teaching life was not a grand way to spend a human life.”
“Teaching remains a heroic act to me, and teachers live a necessary and all-important life. We are killing their spirit with unnecessary pressure and expectations that seem forced and destructive to me. Long ago I was one of them. I still regret I was forced to leave them. My entire body of work is because of men and women like them.”
“No one warned me that a teacher could fall so completely in love with his students that graduation seemed like the death of a small civilization.”
On writing:
“…a novel is always a long dream that lives in me for years before I know where to go to hunt it out.”
“It is not long life I wish for—it is to complete what I have to say about the world I found around me from boyhood to old age.”
“It was at the writing desk that I would be made or broken. In every biography of every writer, that was the secret to our kingdom of words. No other measurement counted for anything at all.”
On the veracity of his memoirs:
”None of them will be true word-for-word…It’s some version of the truth, even though I’m telling you right now it’s probably not going to be yours.”
“If a story is not told, it’s the silence around the untold story that ends up killing people. The story can open a secret up to the light.”
He is generous in his praise for other authors and the act of reading widely. Aspiring writers should take note.
On books:
“A great book took me into worlds where I was never supposed to go. I met men whose lives I wished to make my own and men whom I would cheerfully kill. Great writers introduced me to women I wanted to marry and women who would make me run for my life.”
Conroy’s troubled early life, schooling, and profound sense of place provided all the material he needed to make a career as a novelist. Like many readers, I’m sad there won’t be any more books by him. I really don’t think you can go wrong with any of his books, but these are my favorites. Which ones have you liked best?
Lorie Smith Schaefer 
Thanks ,Lorie.Your book recommendations are always spot on!w.
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I think you’d like this one. It has a lot of heart.
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I devoured all of his books, Lorie, and A Lowcountry Heart will be next. When I read your question, The Prince of Tides and The Great Santana, jumped to the forefront of my mind. As always, you chose meaningful quotes to share with us. i regularly read a few of his quotes about teachers and teaching in my workshops because they rang so true to me and the fellow teachers I was addressing.
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His quote from The Water is Wide, which I think you read to us at PDC, sent me in his direction years ago. I thank you for for that, and so much more.
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Sorry. It was from Prince of Tides.
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“There’s no word in the language I revere more than ‘teacher.’ My heart sings when a kid refers to me as his teacher, and it always has. I’ve honored myself and the entire family of man by becoming a teacher.”
–Pat Conroy, Prince of Tides
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That one I know by heart, Lorie.
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My Losing Season-my personal favorite Kermit Frog
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Haven’t read that one, but will put it on my list. And thanks again for the book!
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