"There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book."
Read quote
9 likes
Quote collection
Carson McCullers quotes (page 3 of 6)
115 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The seed of the idea is developed by both labor and the unconscious, and the struggle that goes on between them."
Read quote
8 likes
"... and we are not alone in this slavery. there are millions of others throughout the world, of all colors and races and creeds. this we must remember. there are many of our people who hate the poor of the white race, and they hate us. the people in this town living by the river who work in the mills. people who are almost as much in need as we are ourselves. this hatred is a great evil, and no good can ever come from it... the injustice of need must bring us all together and not separate us. we must remember that we all make the things of this earth of value because of labor."
Read quote
8 likes
"There is no stillness like the quiet of the first cold nights in the fall."
Read quote
8 likes
"All we can do is go around telling the truth."
Read quote
8 likes
"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."
Read quote
7 likes
"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."
Read quote
7 likes
"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."
Read quote
7 likes
"The writer must hew the phantom rock."
Read quote
7 likes
"justice itself is a chimera, a delusion. Justice is not a flat yardstick, applied in equal measure to an equal situation."
Read quote
6 likes
"Resentment is the most precious flower of poverty."
Read quote
6 likes
"Don't you loathe it when doctors use the word 'we' when it applies only and solely to yourself?"
Read quote
6 likes
"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."
Read quote
6 likes
"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."
Read quote
6 likes
"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."
Read quote
6 likes
"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."
Read quote
6 likes
"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."
Read quote
6 likes
"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."
Read quote
6 likes
"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."
Read quote
6 likes
"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."
Read quote
6 likes