August 2006 On Paris, writing, food and friendship In the last days I would ever feel like a young man, I went to live in Paris to finish the novel I was writing at the time, The Lords of Discipline. While attending The Citadel, I had gone into an uncontrollable rapture when I read Ernest …
The Citadel Commencement Speech – “I wear the ring”
May 12, 2001 General Grinalds; the Board of Visitors; Lt. Col. Thomas Nugent Courvoisie, the Boo, and my first book; Greg and Mary Wilson Smith, The Citadel family who did more than anyone else to bring me back to my Citadel family; Skip Wharton; Rogers Harrell, member of the class of '01 [who] …
Pat Conroy talks about the South, his mother, and The Prince of Tides
(Taken from a speech delivered at the annual American Booksellers Association convention in 1985) 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 …