Mccullers Quotes & Sayings

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

I was like a cat always climbing the wrong tree. — Carson McCullers

The mutual distrust between the men who were just awakened and those who were ending a long night gave everyone a feeling of estrangement. — Carson McCullers

Doctor Copeland belt old evil anger in him. The words rose inchoately to his throat and he could not speak them. They would listen to the old man. Yet to word the reason they will not attend. — Carson McCullers

Some men are heroes by nature in that they will give all that is in them without regard to the effort or to the personal returns. — Carson McCullers

It was better to be in a jail where you could bang the walls than in a jail you could not see. — Carson McCullers

But listen! 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. 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.' Jake — Carson McCullers

You mean,' Captain Penderton said, 'that any fulfilment obtained at the expense of normalcy is wrong, and should not be allowed to bring happiness. In short, it is better, because it is morally honourable, for the square peg to keep scraping around the round hole rather than to discover and use the unorthodox square that would fit?' ... 'I don't agree — Carson McCullers

It is music that causes the heart to broaden and the listener to grow cold with ecstasy and fright. — Carson McCullers

Man does not make these natural resources
man only develops them, only uses them for work ... How can a man own ground and space and sunlight and rain for crops? — Carson McCullers

You have a name and one thing after another happens to you, and you behave in various ways and do things, so that soon the name begins to have a meaning. Things have accumulated around your name. — Carson McCullers

Death is the great gamer with a sleeve of tricks. — Carson McCullers

Sunday afternoons are the longest afternoons of all ... — Carson McCullers

To the lost, transfixed among the self-inflicted ruins,
All that is non-air (if this indeed is not deception)
Is agony immobilized. While Time,
The endless idiot, runs screaming round the world. — Carson McCullers

Because in some men it is in them to give up everything personal at some time, before it ferments and poisons
throw it to some human being or some human idea. They have to. — Carson McCullers

There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book. — Carson McCullers

But the music did not come again. The tune was left broken, unfinished. And the drawn tightness she could no longer stand. She felt she must do something wild and sudden that never had been done before. She hit herself on the head with her fist, but that did not help any at all. And she began to talk aloud, although at first she paid no attention to her own words and did not know in advance what she would say. — Carson McCullers

The whole world was this symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen. — Carson McCullers

It was a small of her back and her face that got so tired. Their (her retail employer's) mono was supposed to be, 'Keep on your toes and smile.' Once she was out of the store she had to frown a long time to get her face natural again. Even her ears were tired. — Carson McCullers

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? — Carson McCullers

The world that jibes your tenderness / Jails your lust. — Carson McCullers

Were trying to dig up the roots of that big oak stump near the — Carson McCullers

I understood that my family was rich in love but would probably never own the land my father, John, dreamed of owning. My mother, Willie Ella Mays Clarke, was a washerwoman for poor white folks in the area of Columbus, Georgia where the writer Carson McCullers once lived. — John Henrik Clarke

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. — Carson McCullers

Love is the main generator of all good writing ... Love, passion, compassion, are all welded together. — Carson McCullers

Resentment is the most precious flower of poverty. — Carson McCullers

How can the dead be truly dead when they still live in the souls of those who are left behind? — Carson McCullers

There is no stillness like the quiet of the first cold nights in the fall. — Carson McCullers

The writer must hew the phantom rock. — Carson McCullers

To know who you are, you have to have a place to come from. — Carson McCullers

He did not wholly understand the intricate play of ideas and the complex phrases, but as he read he sensed a strong, who purpose behind the words and he felt that he almost understood. — Carson McCullers

Now hoppin'-john was F. Jasmine's very favorite food. She had always warned them to wave a plate of rice and peas before her nose when she was in her coffin, to make certain there was no mistake; for if a breath of life was left in her, she would sit up and eat, but if she smelled the hopping-john, and did not stir, then they could just nail down the coffin and be certain she was truly dead. — Carson McCullers

It happened that green and crazy summer when Frankie was twelve years old. This was the summer when for a long time she had not been a member. She belonged to no club and was a member of nothing in the world. Frankie had become an unjoined person and hung around in doorways, and she was afraid. — Carson McCullers

In her mind she could remember about six different tunes from the pieces of his [Mozart's] she had heard. A few of them were kind of quick and tinkling, and another was like that smell in springtime after a rain. But they all made her somehow sad and excited at the same time.
She hummed one of the tunes, and after a while in the hot, empty house by herself she felt the tears come in her eyes. — Carson McCullers

I think we look for the differences in people because it makes us less lonely. — Carson McCullers

Listen," F. Jasmine said. "What I've been trying to say is this. Doesn't it strike you as strange that I am I, and you are you? I am F. Jasmine Addams. And you are Berenice Sadie Brown. And we can look at each other, and touch each other, and stay together year in and year out in the same room. Yet always I am I, and you are you. And I can't ever be anything else but me, and you can ever be anything else but you. Have you ever thought of that? And does it seem to you strange? — Carson McCullers

Justice itself is a chimera, a delusion. Justice is not a flat yardstick, applied in equal measure to an equal situation. — Carson McCullers

She had always kept things to herself. That was one sure truth. — Carson McCullers

He mentioned Beethoven. She had read in the library about that musician - his name was pronounced with an a and spelled with a double e. He was a German fellow like Mozart. When he was living he spoke in a foreign language and lived in a foreign place - like she wanted to do. — 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

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. A seed grows in writing as in nature. The seed of the idea is developed by both labor and the unconscious, and the struggle that goes on between them. — Carson McCullers

He had a few eccentricities himself and was tolerant of the peculiarities of others; indeed, he rather relished the ridiculous. — Carson McCullers

The way i need you is a loneliness i cannot bear. — Carson McCullers

Owing to the fact he was a mute they were able to give him all the qualities they wanted him to have. — Carson McCullers

He was like a man who had served a term in prison or had been to Harvard College or had lived for a long time with foreigners in South America. — 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

It was like she was so empty there wasn't even a feeling or thought in her. — Carson McCullers

It was the year Frankie thought about the world. And she did not see it as a round school globe, with the countries neat and different-colored. She thought of the world as huge and cracked and loose
and turning a thousand miles an hour. — Carson McCullers

The silence in the room was deep as the night itself. Biff stood transfixed, lost in his meditations. Then suddenly he felt a quickening in him. His heart turned and he leaned his back against the counter for support. For in a swift radiance of illumination he saw a glimpse of human struggle and of valour. Of the endless fluid passage of humanity through endless time. And of those who labour 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. Between the two worlds he was suspended ... suspended between radiance and darkness, between bitter irony and faith ... And would he just stand here like a jittery nanny or would he pull himself together and be reasonable? For after all was he a sensible man or was he not? — Carson McCullers

I had no power of how and when to remember her. You think you can put up a kind of shield. But remembering don't come to a man face forward - it corners around sideways. I was at the mercy of everything I saw and heard. Suddenly instead of me combing the countryside to find her, she begun to chase me around in my very soul. She chasing me mind you! And in my soul. — Carson McCullers

He waited for the black, terrible anger as though for some beast out of the night. But it did not come to him. His bowels seemed weighted with lead, and he walked slowly and lingered against fences and the cold, wet walls of buildings by the way. Descent into the depths until at last there was no further chasm below. He touched the solid bottom of despair and there took ease. — Carson McCullers

She spoke and he could not understand. The sounds were distinct in his ear but they had no shape or meaning. It was as though his head were the prow of a boat and the sounds were water that broke on him and then flowed past. He felt he had to look behind to find the words already said. — Carson McCullers

Maybe when people longed for a thing that bad the longing made them trust in anything that might give it to them. — Carson McCullers

But now no music was in her mind. That was a funny thing. It was like she was shut out from the inside room. Sometimes a quick little tune would come and go - but she never went into the inside room with music like she used to do. It was like she was too tense. Or maybe because it was like the store took all her energy and time ... She wanted to stay in the inside room but she didn't know how. It was like the inside room was locked somewhere away from her. A very hard thing to understand. — Carson McCullers

There are times when a man's greatest need is to have someone to love, some focal point for his diffused emotions. Also there are times when the irritations, disappointments, and fears of life, restless as spermatozoids, must be released in hate. — Carson McCullers

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. The bewildered soul can answer only: "Since I do not understand 'Who I am,' I only know what I am not." The corollary of this emotional incertitude is snobbism, intolerance and racial hate. The xenophobic individual can only reject and destroy, as the xenophobic nation inevitably makes war. — Carson McCullers

Comparing the Brooklyn that I know with Manhattan is like comparing a comfortable and complacent duenna to her more brilliant and neurotic sister. — Carson McCullers

It was like she was cheated. Only nobody had cheated her. So there was nobody to take it out on. However, just the same she had that feeling. Cheated. — Carson McCullers

The Heart is a lonely hunter with only one desire! To find some lasting comfort in the arms of anothers fire ... driven by a desperate hunger to the arms of a neon light, the heart is a lonely hunter when there's no sign of love in sight! — Carson McCullers

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. — Carson McCullers

In the face of brutality I was prudent. Before injustice I held my peace. I sacrificed the things in hand for the good of they hypothetical whole. I believed in the tongue instead of the fist. As an armor against oppression I taught patience and faith in the human soul I know now how wrong I was. I have been a traitor to myself and to my people. All that is not. Now is the time to act and to act quickly. Fight cunning with cunning and might with might — Carson McCullers

And now, as a summer flower shatters in September ,it was finished. — Carson McCullers

And why did everyone persist in thinking the mute was exactly as they wanted him to be
when most likely it was all a very queer mistake? ... In the battling tumult of voices he alone was silent. — Carson McCullers

Jake had begun to carry chalk in his pockets, also. He wrote brief sentences. He tried to word them so that a man would think. — Carson McCullers

German lieder is creepy music. That's why I specialize in it. — Carson McCullers

But look what the Church has done to Jesus during the last two thousand years. What they have made of Him. How they have turned every word He spoke for their own vile ends. Jesus would be framed and in jail if he was living today. — Carson McCullers

During these weeks there was a quality about Miss Amelia that many people noticed. She laughed often, with a deep ringing laugh, and her whistling had a sassy, tunefull trickery. She was forever trying out her strength, lifting up heavy objects or poking her tough biceps with her finger. — Carson McCullers

What good was it? That was the question she would like to know. What the hell good was it. All the plans she had made, and the music. When all that came of it was this trap
the store, then home to sleep, and back at the store again. — Carson McCullers

And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being loved is intolerable to many. — Carson McCullers

And every day there is music. One dark voice will start a phrase, half-sung, and like a question. And after a moment another voice will join in, soon the whole gang will be singing. The voices are dark in the golden glare, the music intricately blended, both somber and joyful. The music will swell until at last it seems that the sound does not come from the twelve men on the gang, but from the earth itself, or the wide sky. It is music that causes the heart to broaden and the listener to grow cold with ecstasy and fright. Then slowly the music will sink down until at last there remains one lonely voice, then a great hoarse breath, the sun, the sound of the picks in the silence.
And what kind of gang is this that can make such music? Just twelve mortal men, seven of them black and five of them white boys from this country. Just twelve mortal men who are together. — Carson McCullers

But the hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into curious shapes. 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. — Carson McCullers

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. I run these little pieces of myself through her and I come out complete. Now do you follow me? — Carson McCullers

In her heart it didn't give her near the same feeling that music did. Nothing was really as good as music. — 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

That was the best of all. To speak the truth and be attended. — Carson McCullers

People felt themselves watching him even before they knew that there was anything different about him. His eyes made a person think that he heard things that no one else had ever heard, that he knew things no one had ever guessed before. He did not seem quite human. — Carson McCullers

The world is certainty a sudden place. — Carson McCullers

Don't you loathe it when doctors use the word 'we' when it applies only and solely to yourself? — Carson McCullers

I go all around and try to tell them. And they laugh. I can't make them understand anything. No matter what I say I can't seem to make them see the truth. — Carson McCullers

Today we are not put up on the platforms and sold at the courthouse square. But we are forced to sell our strength, our time, our souls during almost every hour that we live. We have been freed from one kind of slavery only to be delivered into another. Is this freedom? — Carson McCullers

She decided to donate blood to the Red Cross; she wanted to donate a quart a week and her blood would be in the veins of Australians and Fighting French and Chinese, all over the whole world, and it would be as though she were close kin to all of these people. She could hear the army doctors saying that the blood of Frankie Addams was the reddest and the strongest blood that they had ever known. — Carson McCullers

What did he understand? Nothing. Where was he headed? Nowhere. What did he want? To know. What? A meaning. Why? A riddle. — Carson McCullers

The eyes of his friend were moist and dark, and in them he saw the little rectangled pictures of himself that he had watched a thousand times. — Carson McCullers

The warring love and hatred
love for his people and hatred for the oppressors of his people
that left him exhausted and sick in spirit. — Carson McCullers

Why? Why was it that in cases of real love the one who is left does not more often follow the beloved by suicide? Only because the living must bury the dead? Because of the measured rites that must be fulfilled after a death? Because it is as though the one who is left steps for a time upon a stage and each second swells to an unlimited amount of time and he id watched by many eyes? Because there is a function he must carry out? Or perhaps, when there is love, the widowed must stay for the resurrection of the beloved - so that the one who has gone is not really dead, but grows and is created for a second time in the soul of the living? Why? — Carson McCullers

We all of us somehow caught. We born this way or that way and we don't know why. But we caught any how. I was born Berenice. You Born Franky. John Henry born John Henry. And maybe we wants to widen and bust free. But no matter what we do we still caught. Me is me and you is you and he is he. We each one of us somehow caught all by ourself. I'm caught worse than you is. Because I'm Black, because I'm colored. — Carson McCullers

There are those who know and those who don't know. And for every ten thousand who don't know there's only one who knows. That's the miracle of all time
the fact that these millions know so much but don't know this. — Carson McCullers

Any form of art can only develop by means of single mutations by individual creators. If only traditional conventions are used an art will die, and the widening of an art form is bound to seem strange at first, and awkward. Any growing thing must go through awkward stages. The creator who is misunderstood because of his breach of convention may say to himself, 'I seem strange to you, but anyway I am alive. — Carson McCullers

In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together. — Carson McCullers

All men are lonely. But sometimes it seems to me that we Americans are the loneliest of all. Our hunger for foreign places and new ways has been with us almost like a national disease. Our literature is stamped with a quality of longing and unrest, and our writers have been great wanderers. — Carson McCullers

He married and made a home. He went endlessly from house to house and spoke the mission and the truth. The hopeless suffering of his people made in him a madness, a wild and evil feeling of destruction. At times he drank strong liquor and beat his head against the floor. In his heart there was a savage violence, and once he grasped the poker from the hearth and struck down his wife. She took Hamilton, Karl Marx, William, and Portia with her to her father's home. He wrestled in his spirit and fought down the evil blackness. But Daisy did not come back. And eight years later when she died his sons were not children anymore and they did not return to him. He was left an old man in an empty house. — Carson McCullers

Leonora Penderton feared neither man, beast, nor the devil; God she had never known. — Carson McCullers

I wish I was somebody else except me. — Carson McCullers

In one of their quarrels, they had begun calling each other Mister. and Misses., and since then they had never made it up enough to change it. — Carson McCullers

In his face there came to be a brooding peace that is seen most often in the faces of the very sorrowful or the very wise. But still he wandered through the streets of the town, always silent and alone. — Carson McCullers

He nearly always put his hand on his friend's arm and looked for a second into his face before leaving him. — Carson McCullers

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. 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. — Carson McCullers

By the moonlight he watched his wife for the last time. His hand sought the adjacent flesh and sorrow paralleled desire in the immense complexity of love. — Carson McCullers

The writer is by nature a dreamer - a conscious dreamer. — Carson McCullers

We are homesick most for the places we have never known. — Carson McCullers