There’s nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book.
CARSON MCCULLERSI see a green tree. And to me it is green. And you would call the tree green also. And we would agree on this. But is the colour you see as green the same colour I see as green?
More Carson McCullers Quotes
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I once wrote a story about a writer who could not write anymore, and my friend Tennessee Williams said, ‘How could you dare write that story, it’s the most frightening work I have ever read.’ I was pretty well sunk while I was writing it.
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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.
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There is no stillness like the quiet of the first cold nights in the fall.
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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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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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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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I was like a cat always climbing the wrong tree.
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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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As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.
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There are corporations worth billions of dollars – and hundreds of thousands of people who don’t get to eat.
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Love is the main generator of all good writing… Love, passion, compassion, are all welded together.
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She wished there was some place where she could go to hum it out loud. Some kind of music was too private to sing in a house cram fall of people. It was funny, too, how lonesome a person could be in a crowded house.
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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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For you see, when us people who know run into each other that’s an event. It almost never happens. Sometimes we meet each other and neither guesses that the other is one who knows. That’s a bad thing. It’s happened to me a lot of times. But you see there are so few of us.
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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.
CARSON MCCULLERS







