"Day and night she had drudged and struggled and thrown her soul into her work, and there was not much of her left over for anything else. Being human, she suffered from this lack and did what she could to make up for it. If she passed the evening bent over a table in the library and later declared that she had spent that time playing cards, it was as though she had managed to do both those things. Through the lies, she lived vicariously. The lies doubled the little of her existence that was left over from work and augmented the little rag end of her personal life."

5 likes

Source: Carson McCullers (1998). “Collected Stories of Carson McCullers”, p.133, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

About the author

Carson McCullers

Novelist

Carson McCullers was an American novelist and playwright known for her poignant exploration of loneliness and identity in works like 'The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.'

All quotes by Carson McCullers →

Same author

More quotes by Carson McCullers

See all →
Carson McCullers Novelist

"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!"

Read quote
Carson McCullers Novelist

"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."

Read quote