Carson McCullers quotes

Carson McCullers was an American novelist, playwright, and poet known for her insightful portrayals of loneliness and the human condition. Her most famous works include "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" and "The Member of the Wedding." She remains a major figure in Southern Gothic literature and twentieth-century American fiction. Here are 52 of her quotes:

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)
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. View quote
Carson McCullers
How can the dead be truly dead when they still live in the souls of those who are left behind? View quote
Carson McCullers
All we can do is go around telling the truth. View quote
Carson McCullers
The thinking mind is best controlled by the imagination. View quote
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. View quote
Carson McCullers
There is no stillness like the quiet of the first cold nights in the fall. View quote
Carson McCullers
I´m a stranger in a strange land. View quote
Carson McCullers
I think we look for the differences in people because it makes us less lonely. View quote
Carson McCullers
the way i need you is a loneliness i cannot bear. View quote
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)
A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lillies of the swamp. View quote
Carson McCullers
And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being loved is intolerable to many. View quote
Carson McCullers
The value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself. View quote
Carson McCullers
But all the time-no matter what she was doing-there was music. View quote
Carson McCullers
There was hope in him, and soon perhaps the outline of his journey would take form. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
Carson McCullers
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! View quote
Carson McCullers
When a person knows and can't make the others understand, what does he do? View quote
Carson McCullers
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)
We are homesick most for the places we have never known. View quote
Carson McCullers
It was better to be in a jail where you could bang the walls than in a jail you could not see. View quote
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. View quote
Carson McCullers
I am not meant to be alone and without you who understands. View quote
Carson McCullers

Carson McCullers

Carson McCullers - Image
Photo: Carl Van Vechten, 1959, CC BY-SA 4.0
Occupation: American Novelist
Born: February 19, 1917
Died: September 29, 1967
Quotes count: 52

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