Pat Conroy Quotes

I tell people all the time - I'm a very spiritual person, so I pray over everything that I do including creating music, a new song.

Your vivid, exciting companionship in the office must not be your audience, you must find your own quiet center of life, and write from that to the world.

I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say.

Prayer gives a man the opportunity of getting to know a gentleman he hardly ever meets. I do not mean his maker, but himself.

I write in my study, where I also have my prayer altar. I believe that keeps me focused and gives me positive energy and reminds me that I'm merely the instrument of greater creative forces.

What I do is very spiritual to me. I can't really connect with things unless they are spiritual in nature, so I have to make acting spiritual for myself, and each role a spiritual journey for me.

The impressions of the spriritual experiences gave my future life its form and content.

The block of marble is not the sculptor, and doesn't see that he's about to become a masterpiece... We're the block of marble and God is the sculptor, and the chisel is.... everything.

It's very easy I think when you're a creative person to wait for the right thing and to start getting self-conscious about how you are going to express what you do and what's special about you. I would say in general, a lot of times the answer is that you just dive into something and you find your own voice through that process.

Not a day has gone by that I have not communicated with my Father in Heaven through prayer. It is a relationship I cherish-one I would literally be lost without. If you do not now have such a relationship with your Father in Heaven, I urge you to work toward that goal. As you do so, you will be entitled to His inspiration and guidance in your life.

You must find your own quiet center of life, and write from that to the world.

[Margot Hentoff] stopped [writing]. She decided that she had nothing more to say. And yet, every day, she has a whole lot to say, and I wish she'd write it down.

The key to being a wonderful writer is not to write. You just get out of the way. Leave room for God to walk in the room. And when I write something that I know is right, I get on my knees and say 'thank you.'

Each one of us has our own evolution of life, and each one of us goes through different tests which are unique and challenging. But certain things are common. And we do learn things from each other's experience. On a spiritual journey, we all have the same destination.

I do feel like I have a direct connection with God for some reason; always have since I was a little kid - I would talk to God, talk to the sky.

In an encounter with divine reality, we do not hear a voice but acquire a voice, and the voice we acquire is our own.

I've always been a spiritual person who believed in a Higher Power. So, I've always had my 1-on-1 with God, even if I wasn't much of a religious person.

I get to study and I got to mimic and what I basically did was I stole from every person that I could steal from. I was an imitator. That's what I was. It was years before I could take all of these things that I loved about all of these different artists and put them together and find my voice.

My hectic work schedule does not often permit me time to visit temples, but my conversations with God don't depend on idol worship. Inside my heart, I have developed and sustained a direct communication with Him.

As humans, we have the tendency to call on God only when we think that we're in dire straits as opposed to cultivating a real relationship with Him every day. And that's what my music tries to convey to all the listeners - try to cultivate it every day.

Ideas come through us, not from us.

I can honestly say I am a Christian, but my spirituality has been developed on the road and is based on my experiences with God.

A man has no religion who has not slowly and painfully gathered one together, adding to it, shaping it; and one's religion is never complete and final, it seems, but must always be undergoing modification.

A beginner must look on himself as one setting out to make a garden for his Lord's pleasure, on most unfruitful soil which abounds in weeds. His Majesty roots up the weeds and will put in good plants instead. Let us reckon that this is already done when the soul decides to practice prayer and has begun to do so.

Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws what he is, and what he says. When the source dries up, the work withers and crumbles.