Rivers > Rivers's Quotes

“The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are things you get ashamed of, because words make them smaller. When they were in your head they were limitless; but when they come out they seem to be no bigger than normal things. But that's not all. The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried; they are clues that could guide your enemies to a prize they would love to steal. It's hard and painful for you to talk about these things ... and then people just look at you strangely. They haven't understood what you've said at all, or why you almost cried while you were saying it.”
― Stephen King, The Body

“Teach them the quiet verbs of kindness, to live beyond themselves. Urge them toward excellence, drive them toward gentleness, pull them deep into yourself, pull them upward toward manhood, but softly like an angel arranging clouds. Let your spirit move through them softly.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“She was one of those Southerners who knew from an early age that the South could never be more for them than a fragrant prison, administered by a collective of loving but treacherous relatives.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“In families, there are no crimes beyond forgiveness.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“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.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“Every woman I had ever met who walked through the world appraised and classified by an extraordinary physicality had also received the keys to an unbearable solitude. It was the coefficient of their beauty, the price they had to pay.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“If your parents disapprove of you and are cunning with their disapproval, there will never come a new dawn when you can become convinced of your own value. There is no fixing a damaged childhood. The best you can hope for is to make the sucker float.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“Her secret, we would discover, was that once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers, that the mind can never break off from the journey.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“Like many men and women who make egregious and irretrievable mistakes with their own children, she would redeem herself by becoming the perfect grandmother.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“We began our life together at a moment of natural self-pity and defeat that left an inimitable impression on both of us. The rejection chastened me and let me know my proper place in the grand scheme of things. It was the last time I would ever make a move that required boldness or a leap of the imagination. I became tentative, suspicious, and dull. I learned to hold my tongue and mark my trail behind me and to look to the future with a wary eye. Finally, I was robbed of a certain optimism, that reckless acceptance of the world and all it could hand my way that had been my strength and deliverance.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“it had been a winter of deadening seriousness, when all the illusions and bright dreams of my early twenties had withered and died. I did not yet have the interior resources to dream new dreams; I was far too busy mourning the death of the old ones and wondering how I was to survive without them. I was sure I could replace them somehow , but was not sure I could restore their brassy luster or dazzling impress .”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“Saints make wonderful grandfathers and lousy husbands.”
― pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“And each year, I lose a little bit more of what made me special as a kid. I don’t think as much or question as much. I dare nothing. I put nothing on the line. Even my passions are now frayed and pathetic.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“But I had married a fine and comely girl, and with brilliance and craft and all instincts of self-preservation jettisoned, I succeeded over the years, through neglect, coldness, and betrayal, in turning her into the exact image of my mother.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“We've made it back to each other. We've got lots of time to try our hands at restoring the ruins”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“Laughter is the only strategy that has ever worked at all for me when my world was falling apart.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“What I wanted most was a life of vigorous quality.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“The most important things are the hardest things to say”
― Stephen King, The Body

“You always know the truth, because when you cut yourself or someone else with it, there's always a bloody show.”
― Stephen King, The Body

“That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”
― Stephen King, The Body

“I want to go someplace where nobody knows me and I don't have any black marks against me before I start.”
― Stephen King, The Body