Carson McCullers Quotes - Page 4

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• 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

  Country, Home, Simple

  Carson McCullers (1975). “The mortgaged heart”, Penguin Books Ltd

  66 Copy quote

• 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

  Mistake, Nails, Coffins

  5 Copy quote

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

  Carson McCullers

  Doe, Persons, Knows

  Carson McCullers (2010). “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter”, p.69, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Hurt, Children, Heart

  Carson McCullers (2005). “The Ballad of the Sad Cafe”, p.28, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Lonely, Men, Quality

  Carson McCullers (2017). “Carson McCullers: Stories, Plays & Other Writings”, p.408, Library of America

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Running, People, Events

  Carson McCullers (2010). “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter”, p.24, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Squares, Roots, And Love

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Pieces, Littles, Crystals

  Carson McCullers (2010). “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter”, p.35, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

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

  Carson McCullers

  Secret, Way, Truth Is

  Carson McCullers (1998). “Collected Stories of Carson McCullers”, p.234, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Taken, Hands, People

  Carson McCullers (1998). “Collected Stories of Carson McCullers”, p.217, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

  Carson McCullers

  Lonely, Heart, Hunters

  Title of book (1940)

  25 Copy quote

• 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

  Light, Sky, Listening

  Carson McCullers (2004). “The Member of the Wedding”, p.24, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  6 Copy quote

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

  Carson McCullers

  Lonely, Heart, Hunters

  5 Copy quote

• I was like a cat always climbing the wrong tree.

  Carson McCullers

  Cat, Climbing, Tree

  Carson McCullers (1998). “Clock Without Hands”, p.214, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Love, Struggle, Endless Time

  Carson McCullers, Carlos L. Dews (2001). “Illumination and night glare: the unfinished autobiography of Carson McCullers”, Univ of Wisconsin Pr

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Doctors, Hands, Half

  Carson McCullers (1998). “Clock Without Hands”, p.72, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  7 Copy quote

• Death is the great gamer with a sleeve of tricks.

  Carson McCullers

  Death, Gamer, Tricks

  Carson McCullers (1998). “Clock Without Hands”, p.32, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Hurt, Heart, Numbness

  Carson McCullers (2010). “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter”, p.119, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Jesus, Years, Two

  Carson McCullers (2010). “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter”, p.158, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Hero, Men, Giving

  Carson McCullers (2005). “The Mortgaged Heart: Selected Writings”, p.124, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Miracle, Understanding, Facts

  Carson McCullers (2010). “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter”, p.24, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• 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?

  Carson McCullers

  Years, Trying, Together

  Carson McCullers (1998). “Collected Stories of Carson McCullers”, p.371, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Real, Thinking, Feelings

  Carson McCullers (2010). “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter”, p.52, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Fighting, Hands, People

  "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter".

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Giving Up, Men, Ideas

  Carson McCullers (2010). “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter”, p.32, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

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