What are the sources of an illumination? To me, they come after hours of searching and keeping my soul ready. Yet they come in a flash, as a religious phenomenon.
CARSON MCCULLERSBut the hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into curious shapes.
More Carson McCullers Quotes
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The most fatal thing a man can do is try to stand alone.
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The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved.
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Sometimes this fellow’s music was like little colored pieces of crystal candy, and other times it was the softest, saddest thing she had ever imagined about.
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Wherever you look there’s meanness and corruption. This room, this bottle of grape wine, these fruits in the basket, are all products of profit and loss.
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The human heart is a lonely hunter-but the search for us southerners is more anguished.
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I meditated on love and reasoned it out. I realized what is wrong with us. Men fall in love for the first time. And what do they fall in love with? …They fall in love with a woman. They start at the wrong end of love. They begin at the climax.
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But no value has been put on human life; it is given to us free and taken without being paid for. What is it worth?
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His own life seemed so solitary, a fragile column supporting nothing amidst the wreckage of the years.
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I run these little pieces of myself through her and I come out complete. Now do you follow me?
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A fellow can’t live without giving his passive acceptance to meanness. Somebody wears his tail to a frazzle for every mouthful we eat and every stitch we wear-and nobody seems to know. Everybody is blind, dumb, and blunt-headed-stupid and mean.
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The writer by nature of his profession is a dreamer and a conscious dreamer. He must imagine, and imagination takes humility, love and great courage. How can you create a character without live and the struggle that goes with love?
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The writer must hew the phantom rock.
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the way i need you is a loneliness i cannot bear.
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This music was her-the real plain her…This music did not take a long time or a short time. It did not have anything to do with time going by at all. She sat with her arms around her legs, biting her salty knee very hard.
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The whole world was this symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen… Now that it was over there was only her heart beating like a rabbit and this terrible hurt.
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Maybe it was a thing that could not be spoken with words or writing. Maybe he would have to let her understand this in a different way. That was the feeling she had with him.
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The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
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The Heart is a lonely hunter with only one desire!
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The people dreamed and fought and slept as much as ever. And by habit they shortened their thoughts so that they would not wander out into the darkness beyond tomorrow.
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For fear is a primary source of evil. And when the question “Who am I?” recurs and is unanswered, then fear and frustration project a negative attitude.
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The heart of a hurt child can shrink so that forever afterward it is hard and pitted as the seed of a peach. Or again, the heart of such a child may fester and swell until it is a misery to carry within the body, easily chafed and hurt by the most ordinary things.
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But the hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into curious shapes.
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Nothing is so musical as the sound of pouring bourbon for the first drink on a Sunday morning. Not Bach or Schubert or any of those masters.
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It was like they waited to tell each other things that had never been told before. What she had to say was terrible and afraid. But what he would tell her was so true that it would make everything all right.
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We live in the richest country in the world. There’s plenty and to spare for no man, woman, or child to be in want.
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As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.
CARSON MCCULLERS