South Carolina Quotes

“Do you want to go back to Vienna?” he said.
Alec didn’t answer, just stared into space.
“Or we could go somewhere else,” said Magnus. “Anywhere you want. Thailand, South Carolina, Brazil, Peru – Oh, wait, no, I’m banned from Peru. I’d forgotten about that. It’s a long story, but amusing if you want to hear it.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Fallen Angels

“Carolina beach music," Dupree said, coming up on the porch. "The holiest sound on earth.”
― Pat Conroy, Beach Music

“Walking the streets of Charleston in the late afternoons of August was like walking through gauze or inhaling damaged silk.”
― Pat Conroy

“It was growing dark on this long southern evening, and suddenly, at the exact point her finger had indicated, the moon lifted a forehead of stunning gold above the horizon, lifted straight out of filigreed, light-intoxicated clouds that lay on the skyline in attendant veils.

Behind us, the sun was setting in a simultaneous congruent withdrawal and the river turned to flame in a quiet duel of gold....The new gold of moon astonishing and ascendant, he depleted gold of sunset extinguishing itself in the long westward slide, it was the old dance of days in the Carolina marshes, the breathtaking death of days before the eyes of children, until the sun vanished, its final signature a ribbon of bullion strung across the tops of water oaks.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“I go out on the side of a hill, maybe hunting deer, and sit there and see the shadow of night coming over the hill, and I can swear to you there is a part of me that is absolutely untouched by anything civilized. There's a part of me that has never heard of a telephone.”
― James Dickey

“Memory in these incomparable streets, in mosaics of pain and sweetness, was clear to me now, a unity at last. I remembered small and unimportant things from the past: the whispers of roommates during thunderstorms, the smell of brass polish on my fingertips, the first swim at Folly Beach in April, lightning over the Atlantic, shelling oysters at Bowen's Island during a rare Carolina snowstorm, pigeons strutting across the graveyard at St. Philip's, lawyers moving out of their offices to lunch on Broad Street, the darkness of reveille on cold winter mornings, regattas, the flash of bagpipers' tartans passing in review, blue herons on the marshes, the pressure of the chinstrap on my shako, brotherhood, shad roe at Henry's, camellias floating above water in a porcelain bowl, the scowl of Mark Santoro, and brotherhood again.”
― Pat Conroy, The Lords of Discipline

“Together they spent their whole lives waiting for their luck to change, as though luck were some fabulous tide that would one day flood and consecrate the marshes of our island, christening us in the iridescent ointments of a charmed destiny.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“Comely was the town by the curving river that they dismantled in a year's time. Beautiful was Colleton in her last spring as she flung azaleas like a girl throwing rice at a desperate wedding. In dazzling profusion, Colleton ripened in a gauze of sweet gardens and the town ached beneath a canopy of promissory fragrance.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“South Carolina is not a state; it is a cult.”
― Pat Conroy

“I loved these salt rivers more than I loved the sea; I loved the movement of tides more than I loved the fury of surf. Something in me was congruent with this land, something affirmed when I witnessed the startled, piping rush of shrimp or the flash of starlight on the scales of mullet. I could feel myself relax and change whenever I returned to the lowcountry and saw the vast green expanses of marsh, feminine as lace, delicate as calligraphy. The lowcountry had its own special ache and sting.”
― Pat Conroy, The Lords of Discipline

“Many people, after spending a long weekend being stealthily seduced by this grand dame of the South, mistakenly think that they have gotten to know her: they believe (in error) that after a long stroll amongst the rustling palmettoes and gas lamps, a couple of sumptuous meals, and a tour or two, that they have discovered everything there is to know about this seemingly genteel, elegant city. But like any great seductress, Charleston presents a careful veneer of half-truths and outright fabrications, and it lets you, the intended conquest, fill in many of the blanks. Seduction, after all, is not true love, nor is it a gentle act. She whispers stories spun from sugar about pirates and patriots and rebels, about plantations and traditions and manners and yes, even ghosts; but the entire time she is guarded about the real story. Few tourists ever hear the truth, because at the dark heart of Charleston is a winding tale of violence, tragedy and, most of all, sin.”
― James Caskey, Charleston's Ghosts: Hauntings in the Holy City

“South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum.”
― James L. Petigru

“South Carolina is in the spring a paradise, in the summer a hell, and in the autumn a hospital.”
― Eliza Lucas Pinckney

“It wasn’t that she believed in voodoo, precisely—but she believed in the people who believed in voodoo—and that was scary enough.

-Coralee Ayers”
― Caitlin Rush, Curses Beneath Her Feet

“A breeze blew softly, slightly rippling the water as it carried the heady scents of late Carolina springtime through the air. Honeysuckle. Jasmine. Ripe, pungent river mud. Ah, the world felt right.”
― Caitlin Rush, Curses Beneath Her Feet

“Assessing Miller's rebuttal and the 1895 convention, W.E.B. Du Bois made a sobering observation. Miller had, on some fundamental level, misunderstood the aims of the white men who sought to destroy Reconstruction. From Du Bois's perspective, the 1895 constitutional convention was not an exercise in moral reform, or an effort to purge the state of corruption. These were simply bywords embraced to cover for the restoration of a despotic white supremacy. The problem was not that South Carolina's Reconstruction-era government had been consumed by unprecedented graft. Indeed, it was the exact opposite. The very success Miller highlighted, the actual record of 'Negro government' in South Carolina, undermined white supremacy. To redeem white supremacy, that record was twisted, mocked, and caricatured into something that better resembled the prejudices of white South Carolina. 'If there was one thing that South Carolina feared more than bad Negro government,' wrote Du Bois, 'it was good Negro government.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

“South Carolina is too small for a Republic, and too big for an insane asylum.

[James L. Petigru (1789-1863), following the state's vote to secede from the Union in 1860]”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“The old joke is that psychiatrists are doctors who can't stand the sight of blood. Maybe they can't stand it, but if they work where I work, they damn well better get used to it.
At least surgeons and prizefighters get to wear gloves”
― Mike Bartos, Bash

“A school of porpoises broke the surface of the water twenty feet from where we had sat down[...]Each individual porpoise made a sound slightly different from that of any other, so that the school, all twelve of them, flaring and sliding and dancing so near us, formed a kind of woodwind section on the sea's surface or even a single instrument, something unknown and astonishing to man, a celebration of breath itself, of oxygen and sea water and sunlight. They had the eyes of large dogs and their skin was the loveliest, silkiest green imaginable.”
― Pat Conroy, The Lords of Discipline

“Jasper would have been completely hidden if it weren't for Highway 17, the crumbling two-lane road that traced the coastline, splitting cypress swamps and tidal creeks edging right up to the 350,000-acre ACE Basin, where three rivers converged to form the largest, wildest estuarine preserve on the East Coast. Jasper bordered the northeast side of the basin where dolphins, gators, minks, otters, and every manner of waterfowl and shore bird prospered from the daily six-foot inflow and outflow of saltwater, freshwater, and brackish water that rose and fell on cue like the sun itself.”
― Beth Webb Hart, The Wedding Machine

“Today's cheerful note: The atomic bomb can't kill you more times than you're already going to die already.”
― The Index-Journal

“The slightest sea breeze clung to the air as Peter and Harper walked the pathway along Charleston Harbor. A few dolphins played in the not-so-distant waves, and sunlight fell like glitter in shades of orange and pink against the water. And this---this---was Charleston.
All they needed was a front porch painted haint blue and a proverbial glass of sweet tea.”
― Ashley Clark, The Dress Shop on King Street

“South Carolina had thirteen lynchings last year, ten were charged with assault on white women, one with horse stealing and two with being impudent to white women.

The first of the ten charged with rape, named John Peterson, was declared by the white woman in the case to be the wrong man, but the mob said a crime had been committed and somebody had to hang for it. So John Peterson, being the available ‘somebody,’ was hanged. At Columbia, South Carolina, July 30th, a similar charge was made, and three Negroes were hanged one after another because they said they wanted to be sure they got the right one.”
― Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells

“Sugar had grown up in Charleston, South Carolina: possibly the most luscious of the world's garden cities. Behind every wrought-iron gate or exposed-brick wall in the picturesque peninsula blooming between the Ashley and Cooper Rivers lay a sweet-scented treasure trove of camellias, roses, gardenias, magnolias, tea olives, azaleas and jasmine, everywhere, jasmine.
With its lush greenery, opulent vines, sumptuous hedgerows and candy-colored window boxes, it was no wonder the city's native sons and daughters believed it to be the most beautiful place on earth.
In her first years of exile Sugar had tried to cultivate a reminder of the luxuriant garden delights she had left behind, struggling in sometimes hostile elements to train reluctant honeysuckle and sulky sweet potato vines or nurture creeping jenny and autumn stonecrop.”
― Sarah-Kate Lynch, The Wedding Bees

“This is not a race to get to a closing. This is an experience that begins with understanding the needs of every client and developing the individualized steps for each situation.”
― Doug Fish

“Michaela, my darling, I think about you day and night - especially at night, when there's no light except for the light of the moon and no sound except for the sounds of the marsh - when I am along with my thoughts.”
― T.A. Blitch, Pop's Place: Some Things Are Meant To Be

“Michaela looked intently into Pop's eyes and spoke reverently, "I understand that heroes are those who sacrifice and risk everything for others and ask for nothing in return. You might not think so, but you are a hero. A genuine hero no less than the Pattons, McArthurs, and Nimitzes. Especially to me, you are my hero." She hugged his arm and laid her head on his shoulder.”
― T.A. Blitch, Pop's Place: Some Things Are Meant To Be

“With you, I, an American Negro, am deeply concerned about liberty of a man in Yugoslavia and about the rights of Jews in Europe. We care that a Chinese peasant shall have the right to till his land free from fear and want. But I ask you this-an honest question-why is there talk of Spain and Yugoslavia, of Palestine and Greece but no talk of Aiken County, South Carolina. Why so little of Isaac Woodard, a veteran whose eyes were gouged out by a policeman's club? Why do we sweep the burning fact of discrimination against 15,000,000 citizens under the carpets of America?
There are 15,000,000 Negro Americans who do not believe you, ladies and gentlemen, when you say, "justice." We have reasons to believe you mean justice for whites only.”
― Oliver W. Harrington, Why I Left America and Other Essays

“Last night I dreamed of Charleston, as I do almost every night. Far away from my beloved land by day, at night I am there. I dreamed of the marsh grass, the coral sunsets, the smell of plough mud, and the sound of the breeze rustling through the fronds of the palmetto trees. If you were to cut me open, you'd find the water of the Atlantic instead of blood, driftwood instead of bones, and seashells in place of everything else.”
― Victoria Benton Frank, My Magnolia Summer: A Novel

“Here lies the union," one banner proclaimed. "Born 4th July, 1776. Died 7th November, 1860."

"The clouds are threatening," Anderson wrote in his report to Washington. "And the storm may break upon us at any moment." In fact, the clouds had been gathering for decades.”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War