PAT CONROY, America’s preeminent storyteller, delivers a sweeping novel of lyric intensity and searing truth–the story of Jack McCall, an American expatriate in Rome, scarred by tragedy and betrayal. His desperate desire to find peace after his wife’s suicide draws him into a painful, intimate... read more
“It was here we gathered to say farewell to the sunburned, dark-complexioned days which finger painted the river in the tenderness of its insomniac retreat”
“Because when you have been hurt you lose your trust in the world,” I said. “If the world’s mean to you when you’re a child, you spend the rest of your life being mean back.”Highlighted by 14 Kindle customers
“I think they listen to the waves. I think they just love beach music.”Highlighted by 12 Kindle customers
No story is a straight line. The geometry of a human life is too imperfect and complex, too distorted by the laughter of time and the bewildering intricacies of fate to admit the straight line into its system of laws.Highlighted by 11 Kindle customers
Pain doesn’t travel in straight lines. It circles back around and comes up behind you. It’s the circles that kill you.”Highlighted by 11 Kindle customers
American mothers teach their sons how to break a girl’s spirit without even knowing they are imparting such dangerous knowledge. As boys, we learn to betray our future wives by mastering the subtle ways our mothers can be broken by our petulance and disapproval. My own mother provided me with all the weaponry I will ever need to ruin the life of any woman foolish enough to love me.Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers
It never occurred to Tee that vacillation was a form of taking sides that betrayed all parties.Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers
The South’s got a lot wrong with it. But it’s permanent press and it doesn’t wash out.”Highlighted by 9 Kindle customers
American men are allotted just as many tears as American women. But because we are forbidden to shed them, we die long before women do, with our hearts exploding or our blood pressure rising or our livers eaten away by alcohol because that lake of grief inside us has no outlet. We, men, die because our faces were not watered enough.Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers
But no one walks out of his family without reprisals: a family is too disciplined an army to offer compassion to its deserters.Highlighted by 6 Kindle customers
Her view of men was one-dimensional, but not inaccurate: men were prisoners of their genitalia and women were the keepers of the keys to paradise.Highlighted by 5 Kindle customers
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