Katherine Clark

"But when The Prince of Tides came out, thank God she was dead. I’m not sure I would have had the guts to publish that with her still alive."

"Why do they not teach you that time is a fingersnap and an eyeblink, and that you should not allow a moment to pass you by without taking joyous, ecstatic note of it, not wasting a single moment of its swift, breakneck circuit? PAT CONROY, My Losing Season"

"The two most dangerous words in the English language are ‘like’ and ‘as.’ If you do not have something interesting to say after you write down those two words, cross them out, because you’ve entered into the country of cliché. Make sure you have something to say that is new or fresh or in a different way; otherwise, leave them alone."

"With poetry, you take the stock and boil it down to where it’s a glaze. It is the elixir of language"

"They were simply the moanings of sperm cells locked away too long in scrotums"

"My father confused me about what it meant to become a man. From an early age, I knew I didn’t want to be anything like the man he was. PAT CONROY, My Reading Life"

"When you’ve got a father who beats you, as a kid you think it’s your fault. You develop a self-destructive belief that you’re no good. The conflict Pat’s always had is whether he’s worth anything or worth nothing. MARION O’NEILL, Ph.D., ABPP, clinical psychologist"