Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Carson McCullers
Age: 50 †
Born: 1917
Born: February 19
Died: 1967
Died: September 29
Film Writer
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Columbus
Georgia
Lula Carson Smith
Carson McCullers
Known
Urge
Often
Torn
Never
Urges
Foreign
Janus
Familiar
Jukebox
Travel
Homesickness
Places
Homesick
Strange
Nostalgia

More quotes by Carson McCullers

Image
His own life seemed so solitary, a fragile column supporting nothing amidst the wreckage of the years.
Carson McCullers
Image
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.
Carson McCullers
Image
But all the time-no matter what she was doing-there was music.
Carson McCullers
Image
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.
Carson McCullers
Image
When a person knows and can't make the others understand, what does he do?
Carson McCullers
Image
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
Image
Maybe when people longed for a thing that bad the longing made them trust in anything that might give it to them.
Carson McCullers
Image
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!
Carson McCullers
Image
The human heart is a lonely hunter-but the search for us southerners is more anguished.
Carson McCullers
Image
We are homesick most for the places we have never known.
Carson McCullers
Image
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
Image
I'm not explaining this right. What happened was this. There were these beautiful feelings and loose little pleasures inside me. And this woman was something like an assembly line for my soul. I run these little pieces of myself through her and I come out complete. Now do you follow me?
Carson McCullers
Image
The seed of the idea is developed by both labor and the unconscious, and the struggle that goes on between them.
Carson McCullers
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Nothing is so musical as the sound of pouring bourbon for the first drink on a Sunday morning. Not Bach or Schubert or any of those masters.
Carson McCullers
Image
I am not meant to be alone and without you who understands.
Carson McCullers
Image
Coming down was the hardest part of any climbing.
Carson McCullers
Image
And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being loved is intolerable to many.
Carson McCullers
Image
Comparing the Brooklyn that I know with Manhattan is like comparing a comfortable and complacent duenna to her more brilliant and neurotic sister.
Carson McCullers