Quotes from Carson McCullers

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

The way I need you is a loneliness I cannot bear

while time, the endless idiot, runs screaming around the world

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.

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

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

It was funny, too, how lonesome a person could be in a crowded house.

Wonderful music like this was the worst hurt there could be. The whole world was this symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen.

That was the way things were. It was like she was mad all the time. Not how a kid gets mad quick so that soon it is all over - but in another way. Only there was nothing to be mad at. Unless the store. But the store hadn't asked her to take the job. So there was nothing to be mad at. 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.