Quotes by Carson McCullers

“The mind is like a richly woven tapestry in which the colors are distilled from the experiences of the senses, and the design drawn from the convolutions of the intellect.”

“The theme is the theme of humiliation, which is the square root of sin, as opposed to the freedom from humiliation, and love, which is the square root of wonderful.”

“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.”

“Theres nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book.”

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

“While time, the endless idiot, runs screaming round the world.”

“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.”

“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?”

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.

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.

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

There are those who know and those who dont know. And for every ten thousand who dont know theres only one who knows. Thats the miracle of all time--the fact that these millions know so much but dont know this.

For you see, when us people who know run into each other thats an event. It almost never happens. Sometimes we meet each other and neither guesses that the other is one who knows. Thats a bad thing. Its happened to me a lot of times. But you see there are so few of us.

Blount sat down to the table and leaned over close to Singer. There are those who know and those who dont know. And for every ten thousand who dont know theres only one who knows. Thats the miracle of all time - the fact that these millions know so much but dont know this. Its like in the fifteenth century when everybody believed the world was flat and only Columbus and a few other fellows knew the truth. But its different in that it took talent to figure that the earth is round. While the truth is so obvious its a miracle of all history that people dont know.

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

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.

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

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?

It was like that kid had been born knowing how to read. He was only in the second grade but he loved to read stories by himself - and he never asked anybody else to read to him.

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.