I’m not explaining this right. What happened was this. There were these beautiful feelings and loose little pleasures inside me. And this woman was something like an assembly line for my soul.
CARSON MCCULLERSAfter the first establishment of identity there comes the imperative need to lose this new-found sense of separateness and to belong to something larger and more powerful than the weak, lonely self. The sense of moral isolation is intolerable to us.
More Carson McCullers Quotes
-
-
The thinking mind is best controlled by the imagination.
CARSON MCCULLERS -
They are the we of me.
CARSON MCCULLERS -
The music left only this bad hurt in her, and a blankness. She could not remember any of the symphony, not even the last few notes. She tried to remember, but no sound at all came to her. Now that it was over there was only her heart like a rabbit and this terrible hurt.
CARSON MCCULLERS -
People, unless they are nilly-willy or very sick, cannot be taken into the hands and be changed overnight into somthing more worth-while and profitable.
CARSON MCCULLERS -
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.
CARSON MCCULLERS -
I live with the people I create and it has always made my essential loneliness less keen.
CARSON MCCULLERS -
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.
CARSON MCCULLERS -
Coming down was the hardest part of any climbing.
CARSON MCCULLERS -
All we can do is go around telling the truth.
CARSON MCCULLERS -
We wander, question. But the answer waits in each separate heart – the answer of our own identity and the way by which we can master loneliness and feel that at last we belong.
CARSON MCCULLERS -
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.
CARSON MCCULLERS -
I have never gone to a doctor in my adult life, feeling instinctively that doctors meant either cutting or, just as bad, diet.
CARSON MCCULLERS -
We no longer fear the age-old haunting questions: “Who am I?” “Why am I?” “Where am I going?” – and having cast out fear, we can be honest and charitable.
CARSON MCCULLERS -
I think we look for the differences in people because it makes us less lonely.
CARSON MCCULLERS -
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.
CARSON MCCULLERS