Southerners are the more lonely and spiritually estranged, I think, because we have lived so long in an artificial social system that we insisted was natural and right and just – when all along we knew it wasn’t.
CARSON MCCULLERSThe thinking mind is best controlled by the imagination.
More Carson McCullers Quotes
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She stood in front of the mirror a long time, and finally decided she either looked like a sap or else she looked very beautiful. One or the other.
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There’s nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book.
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Writing, for me, is a search for God.
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The writer must hew the phantom rock.
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For in a swift radiance of illumination he saw a glimpse of human struggle and valor. Of the endless fluid passage of the humanity through endless time. And of those who labor and of those who – one word- love. His soul expanded. But for a moment only. For in him, he felt a warning, a shaft of terror.
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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.
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Owing to the fact he was a mute they were able to give him all the qualities they wanted him to have.
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The dimensions of a work of art are seldom realized by the author until the work is accomplished. It is like a flowering dream. Ideas grow, budding silently, and there are a thousand illuminations coming day by day as the work progresses.
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I am not meant to be alone and without you who understands.
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justice itself is a chimera, a delusion. Justice is not a flat yardstick, applied in equal measure to an equal situation.
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The memories of childhood have a strange shuttling quality, and areas of darkness ring the spaces of light.
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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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His own life seemed so solitary, a fragile column supporting nothing amidst the wreckage of the years.
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And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being loved is intolerable to many.
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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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Comparing the Brooklyn that I know with Manhattan is like comparing a comfortable and complacent duenna to her more brilliant and neurotic sister.
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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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And in addition to this our country was founded on what should have been a great, true principle – the freedom, equality, and rights of each individual. Huh! And what has come of that start?
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Love is the bridge that leads from the I sense to the We, and there is a paradox about personal love.
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This was her, Mick Kelly, walking in the daytime and by herself at night. In the hot sun and in the dark with all the plans and feelings.
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When a person knows and can’t make the others understand, what does he do?
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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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Death is the great gamer with a sleeve of tricks.
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The Heart is a Lonely Hunter had such an illumination, beginning my long search for the truth of the story and flashing light into the long two years ahead.
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The thinking mind is best controlled by the imagination.
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Love of another individual opens a new relation between the personality and the world. The lover responds in a new way to nature and may even write poetry.
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