109+ Carson Mccullers Quotes On Friendship, Education And Poetic

Carson McCullers was an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, essayist, and poet. She wrote novels and stories that explored the spiritual isolation of her characters. Her works are often set in the American South and are known for their dark themes and psychological complexity. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Carson Mccullers on love, life, friendship.

Top 10 Carson Mccullers Quotes

1. 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.
2. We are homesick most for the places we have never known.
3. 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.
4. The writer is by nature a dreamer - a conscious dreamer.
5. How can the dead be truly dead when they still live in the souls of those who are left behind?
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. The thinking mind is best controlled by the imagination.
9. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
10. I´m a stranger in a strange land.

Carson Mccullers Short Quotes

• Next to music beer was best.
• It is music that causes the heart to broaden and the listener to grow cold with ecstasy and fright.
• I am not meant to be alone and without you who understands.
• There is no stillness like the quiet of the first cold nights in the fall.
• Resentment is the most precious flower of poverty.
• All we can do is go around telling the truth.
• Don't you loathe it when doctors use the word 'we' when it applies only and solely to yourself?
• The most fatal thing a man can do is try to stand alone.
• Death is the great gamer with a sleeve of tricks.
• Jesus would be framed and in jail if he was living today.

Carson Mccullers Quotes About Love

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

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

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

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. — Carson Mccullers

The value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself. — 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

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

Imagination takes humility, love and great courage. — Carson Mccullers

Carson Mccullers Quotes About Life

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

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

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

Carson Mccullers Quotes About Runs

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

While time, the endless idiot, runs screaming round the world. — 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. — Carson Mccullers

Carson Mccullers Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

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. — 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

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

The trouble with me is that for a long time I have just been an I person. All people belong to a We except me. Not to belong to a We makes you too lonesome. — 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. — 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

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

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

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

The music left only this bad hurt in her, and a blankness. She could not remember any of the symphony, not even the last few notes. She tried to remember, but no sound at all came to her. Now that it was over there was only her heart like a rabbit and this terrible hurt. — 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

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. — 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

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. — Carson Mccullers

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

The human heart is a lonely hunter-but the search for us southerners is more anguished. — Carson Mccullers

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

You don't know what it is to store up a lot of details and then come upon something real. — Carson Mccullers

There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. — Carson Mccullers

the way i need you is a loneliness i cannot bear. — Carson Mccullers

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

They are the we of me. — Carson Mccullers

Sometimes this fellow's music was like little colored pieces of crystal candy, and other times it was the softest, saddest thing she had ever imagined about. — Carson Mccullers

This fear is one of the horrors of an author's life. Where does work come from? What chance, what small episode will start the chain of creation? 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. — Carson Mccullers

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

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

There are all these people here I don't know by sight or by name. And we pass alongside each other and don't have any connection. And they don't know me and I don't know them. And now I'm leaving town and there are all these people I will never know. — Carson Mccullers

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

The world is certainty a sudden place. — Carson Mccullers

We live in the richest country in the world. There's plenty and to spare for no man, woman, or child to be in want. 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? There are corporations worth billions of dollars - and hundreds of thousands of people who don't get to eat. — Carson Mccullers

I have more to say than Hemingway, and God knows, I say it better than Faulkner. — Carson Mccullers

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

There was hope in him, and soon perhaps the outline of his journey would take form. — Carson Mccullers

The memories of childhood have a strange shuttling quality, and areas of darkness ring the spaces of light. The memories of childhood are like clear candles in an acre of night, illuminating fixed scenes from surrounding darkness. — Carson Mccullers

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

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

When a person knows and can't make the others understand, what does he do? — Carson Mccullers

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

The seed of the idea is developed by both labor and the unconscious, and the struggle that goes on between them. — Carson Mccullers

She was afraid of these things that made her suddenly wonder who she was, and what she was going to be in the world, and why she was standing at that minute, seeing a light, or listening, or staring up into the sky: alone. — Carson Mccullers

There is so much truth in children and so little self-consciousness. It always strikes me that they are so capable of losing and finding themselves and also losing and finding those things they feel close to. — Carson Mccullers

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

Writing, for me, is a search for God. — Carson Mccullers

The curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain. — 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

We wander, question. But the answer waits in each separate heart - the answer of our own identity and the way by which we can master loneliness and feel that at last we belong. — 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

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

Once you have lived with another, it is a great torture to have to live alone. — 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

Sunday afternoons are the longest afternoons of all. — 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

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. — 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

Passion is more important than justice. — Carson Mccullers

Coming down was the hardest part of any climbing. — 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

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. — 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. — 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

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

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

The writer must hew the phantom rock. — Carson Mccullers

Life Lessons by Carson Mccullers

1. Carson McCullers teaches us to be resilient in the face of adversity and to never give up on our dreams. She also reminds us to be kind to one another and to appreciate the beauty of life’s small moments. Lastly, she encourages us to be open to new experiences and to embrace our own unique perspectives.