A Quote by Pat Conroy

I became a novelist because of 'Gone With the Wind,' or more precisely, my mother raised me up to be a 'Southern' novelist, with a strong emphasis on the word 'Southern' because 'Gone With the Wind' set my mother's imagination ablaze when she was a young girl growing up in Atlanta.

Pat Conroy

Quote Topics

Atlanta Became Because Emphasis Girl Gone Growing Growing Up Imagination Me More Mother Novelist Precisely Raised Set She Southern Strong Up Wind Word Young Young Girl

Quote Author

Pat Conroy
American - Writer
October 26, 1945 - March 4, 2016

My mother, Southern to the bone, once told me, “All Southern literature can be summed up in these words: ‘On the night the hogs ate Willie, Mama died when she heard what Daddy did to Sister.’” She raised me up to be a Southern writer, but it wasn’t easy.

Pat Conroy

Mother loved the wind. When I was growing up, she would recite this poem to me. Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I, But when the trees bow down their heads, The wind is passing by. So it is with God.

Alice Steinbach

I feel like if you're a girl in the South, you know 'Gone with the Wind' better than anything. Scarlett O'Hara is such a quintessential Southern woman.

Leslie Bibb

I don't like to be described as a Southern writer. The danger is, if you're described as a Southern writer, you might be thought of as someone who writes about a picturesque local scene like Uncle Tom's Cabin, Gone With the Wind, something like that.

Walker Percy

I'm really drawn to comedy. I grew up in the South, so I'm drawn to all things southern, so my role in 'Getting On' has been fun for me to play something southern - I always feel like I understand those characters more because of where I was raised.

Jayma Mays

Like every Southern writer, I thought that I needed to write the next Gone With the Wind.

Karin Slaughter

Like every Southern writer, I thought that I needed to write the next 'Gone With the Wind.'

Karin Slaughter

To Southerners like my mother, 'Gone With the Wind' was not just a book; it was an answer, a clenched fist raised to the North, an anthem of defiance.

Pat Conroy

You had every right to be. He raised his eyes to look at her and she was suddenly and strangely reminded of being four years old at the beach, crying when the wind came up and blew away the castle she had made. Her mother had told her she could make another one if she liked, but it hadn't stopped her crying because what she had thought was permanent was not permanent after all, but only made out of sand that vanished at the touch of wind and water.

Cassandra Clare

I like health-conscious cooking, but growing up in the South, I do love southern cooking; southern France, southern Italy, southern Spain. I love southern cooking.

Clarence Clemons

I don't know Beyoncé, but I have the impression that she's sincere, that she really is a feminist and wanted to put the word out there to make it a good word in a big way by putting it in big letters on the stage, and especially because she was quoting the African novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who said, "We should all be feminists." She's a very accomplished and important novelist.

Gloria Steinem

My favorite movies of all times is 'Doctor Zhivago,' and I love 'Gone With the Wind.' I'd love to play some Southern belle or something where I owned a plantation.

Dolly Parton

There are a lot of sacrifices a mother makes when she's raising a child by herself. I saw it when I was growing up, watching all my mother did for me. But it wasn't until recently that I fully understood the price she paid because of how we had to struggle.

Christina Applegate

If a novelist tells you something she knows or thinks, and you believe her, that is not because either of you think she is God, but because she is doing her work - as a novelist.