Carson McCullers Quotes

Quotes about:

• 

  We are torn between nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.

  Carson McCullers

  Travel, Jukebox, Road Trip

  Carson McCullers (2017). “Carson McCullers: Stories, Plays & Other Writings”, p.408, Library of America

  91 Copy quote

• Falling in love is the easiest thing in the world. It's standing in love that matters.

  Carson McCullers

  Falling In Love, Love Is, Matter

  Carson McCullers (1961). “Clock without hands”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  51 Copy quote

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

  Carson McCullers

  Soul, Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, Left Behind

  Carson McCullers (2004). “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter”, p.333, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  52 Copy quote

• To know who you are, you have to have a place to come from.

  Carson McCullers

  Knows, Who You Are

  18 Copy quote

• All we can do is go around telling the truth.

  Carson McCullers

  Telling The Truth, Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, Can Do

  Carson McCullers (2010). “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter”, p.159, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  Lonely, Heart, Fire

  76 Copy quote

• I must go home periodically to renew my sense of horror.

  Carson McCullers

  Home, Horror

  Carson McCullers (1998). “Collected Stories of Carson McCullers”, p.8, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  9 Copy quote

• The writer is by nature a dreamer - a conscious dreamer.

  Carson McCullers

  Dreamer, Conscious

  63 Copy quote

• The thinking mind is best controlled by the imagination.

  Carson McCullers

  Thinking, Imagination, Mind

  Carson McCullers (2005). “The Mortgaged Heart: Selected Writings”, p.277, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  34 Copy quote

• 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

  Attitude, Hate, War

  47 Copy quote

• 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 McCullers

  Lonely, Thinking, Long

  21 Copy quote

• Love is the bridge that leads from the I sense to the We, and there is a paradox about personal love. 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. Love is affirmation; it motivates the yes responses and the sense of wider communication. Love casts out fear, and in the security of this togetherness we find contentment, courage. 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

  Communication, Writing, Love Is

  49 Copy quote

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

  Carson McCullers

  Children, Heart, Twists

  Carson McCullers (2005). “The Ballad of the Sad Cafe”, p.28, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote
• 

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

  Carson McCullers

  Jukebox, Homesick, Nostalgia

  Carson McCullers (2017). “Carson McCullers: Stories, Plays & Other Writings”, p.408, Library of America

  74 Copy quote

• 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

  Struggle, Character, Humility

  4 Copy quote

• Love is a joint experience between two persons -- but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved.

  Carson McCullers

  Mean, Love Is, Two

  "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe" (1943)

  36 Copy quote

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

  Carson McCullers

  Passion, Writing, Love Is

  Carson McCullers (2005). “The Mortgaged Heart: Selected Writings”, p.281, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Carson McCullers

  Stupid, Wine, Mean

  Carson McCullers (2010). “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter”, p.69, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  6 Copy quote

• There is no stillness like the quiet of the first cold nights in the fall.

  Carson McCullers

  Fall, Night, Firsts

  Carson McCullers (2005). “The Ballad of the Sad Cafe”, p.44, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  10 Copy quote

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

  Carson McCullers

  Wall, Jail, Bangs

  Carson McCullers (1998). “Collected Stories of Carson McCullers”, p.405, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  12 Copy quote

• The most fatal thing a man can do is try to stand alone.

  Carson McCullers

  Freedom, Men, Trying

  Carson McCullers (2010). “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter”, p.302, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  8 Copy quote

• A writer soon discovers he has no single identity but lives the lives of all the people he creates and his weathers are independent of the actual day around him. I live with the people I create and it has always made my essential loneliness less keen.

  Carson McCullers

  Loneliness, Independent, Weather

  30 Copy quote

• 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

  Morning, Sunday, Musical

  Carson McCullers (1998). “Clock Without Hands”, p.23, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  62 Copy quote

• justice itself is a chimera, a delusion. Justice is not a flat yardstick, applied in equal measure to an equal situation.

  Carson McCullers

  Justice, Yardsticks, Chimera

  Carson McCullers (1998). “Clock Without Hands”, p.50, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  7 Copy quote

• The closest thing to being cared for is to care for someone else.

  Carson McCullers

  Caring, Care, Closest

  Carson McCullers (2017). “Carson McCullers: Stories, Plays & Other Writings”, p.310, Library of America

  8 Copy quote

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