Best 136 quotes of Carson Mccullers on MyQuotes

Carson Mccullers

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    Carson Mccullers

    After 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.

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    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.

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    Carson Mccullers

    A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lillies of the swamp.

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    Carson Mccullers

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

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    Carson Mccullers

    ... and we are not alone in this slavery. there are millions of others throughout the world, of all colors and races and creeds. this we must remember. there are many of our people who hate the poor of the white race, and they hate us. the people in this town living by the river who work in the mills. people who are almost as much in need as we are ourselves. this hatred is a great evil, and no good can ever come from it... the injustice of need must bring us all together and not separate us. we must remember that we all make the things of this earth of value because of labor.

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    Carson Mccullers

    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.

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    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.

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    Carson Mccullers

    But all the time-no matter what she was doing-there was music.

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    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.

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    Carson Mccullers

    But no value has been put on human life; it is given to us free and taken without being paid for. What is it worth? If you look around, at times the value may seem to be little or nothing at all. Often after you have sweated and tried and things are not better for you, there comes a feeling deep down in the soul that you are not worth much.

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    Carson Mccullers

    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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    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.

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    Carson Mccullers

    But you haven't never loved God nor even nair person. You hard and tough as cowhide. But just the same I knows you. This afternoon you going to roam all over the place without never being satisfied. You going to traipse all around like you haves to find something lost. You going to work yourself up with excitement. Your heart going to beat hard enough to kill you because you don't love and don't have peace. And then some day you going to bust loose and be ruined.

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    Carson Mccullers

    Coming down was the hardest part of any climbing.

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    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.

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    Carson Mccullers

    Day and night she had drudged and struggled and thrown her soul into her work, and there was not much of her left over for anything else. Being human, she suffered from this lack and did what she could to make up for it. If she passed the evening bent over a table in the library and later declared that she had spent that time playing cards, it was as though she had managed to do both those things. Through the lies, she lived vicariously. The lies doubled the little of her existence that was left over from work and augmented the little rag end of her personal life.

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    Carson Mccullers

    Death is the great gamer with a sleeve of tricks.

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    Carson Mccullers

    Doctors, by God; washing their hands, looking out windows, fiddling with dreadful things while you are stretched out on a table or half undressed on a chair.

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    Carson Mccullers

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

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    Carson Mccullers

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

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    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.

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    Carson Mccullers

    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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    Carson Mccullers

    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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    Carson Mccullers

    Her face felt like it was scattered in pieces and she could not keep it straight. The feeling was a whole lot worse than being hungry for any dinner, yet it was like that. I want--I want--I want--was all that she could think about--but just what this real want was she did no know.

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    Carson Mccullers

    His own life seemed so solitary, a fragile column supporting nothing amidst the wreckage of the years.

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    Carson Mccullers

    I am not meant to be alone and without you who understands.

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    Carson Mccullers

    I do not have any home. So why should I be homesick?

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    Carson Mccullers

    I got to wear blinders all the time so I won't think sideways or in the past.

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    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.

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    Carson Mccullers

    I live with the people I create and it has always made my essential loneliness less keen.

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    Carson Mccullers

    Imagination takes humility, love and great courage.

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    Carson Mccullers

    I´m a stranger in a strange land.

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    Carson Mccullers

    I meditated on love and reasoned it out. I realized what is wrong with us. Men fall in love for the first time. And what do they fall in love with? ...They fall in love with a woman. They start at the wrong end of love. They begin at the climax. Can you wonder it is so miserable? Do you know how men should love? A tree. A rock. A cloud.

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    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?

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    Carson Mccullers

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

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    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 the 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 rot.

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    Carson Mccullers

    I 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?

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    Carson Mccullers

    It is a curious emotion, this certain homesickness I have in mind. With Americans, it is a national trait, as native to us as the roller-coaster or the jukebox. It is no simple longing for the home town or country of our birth. The emotion is Janus-faced: we are torn between a 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.

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    Carson Mccullers

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

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    Carson Mccullers

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

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    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.

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    Carson Mccullers

    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. Maybe it was a thing that could not be spoken with words or writing. Maybe he would have to let her understand this in a different way. That was the feeling she had with him.

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    Carson Mccullers

    I want - I want - I want - was all that she could think about - but just what this real want was she did not know.

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    Carson Mccullers

    I was like a cat always climbing the wrong tree.

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    Carson Mccullers

    Jesus would be framed and in jail if he was living today.

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    Carson Mccullers

    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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    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?

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    Carson Mccullers

    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.

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    Carson Mccullers

    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.

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    Carson Mccullers

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