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Southerners are the more lonely and spiritually estranged, I think, because we have lived so long in an artificial social system that we insisted was natural and right and just - when all along we knew it wasn't.

Carson McCullers

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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
Natural
Artificial
Social
Racism
Right
Lonely
Long
Lived
Southerners
Think
Along
Estranged
Thinking
Wasn
Southerner
System
Insisted
Knew
Spiritually

More quotes by Carson McCullers

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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
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The closest thing to being cared for is to care for someone else.
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While Time, The endless idiot, runs screaming round the world.
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Resentment is the most precious flower of poverty.
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His own life seemed so solitary, a fragile column supporting nothing amidst the wreckage of the years.
Carson McCullers
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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
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When a person knows and can't make the others understand, what does he do?
Carson McCullers
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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
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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
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Once you have lived with another, it is a great torture to have to live alone.
Carson McCullers
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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
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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
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Next to music beer was best.
Carson McCullers
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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.
Carson McCullers
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There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries.
Carson McCullers
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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
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The human heart is a lonely hunter-but the search for us southerners is more anguished.
Carson McCullers
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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
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The seed of the idea is developed by both labor and the unconscious, and the struggle that goes on between them.
Carson McCullers
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What are the sources of an illumination? To me, they come after hours of searching and keeping my soul ready. Yet they come in a flash, as a religious phenomenon. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter had such an illumination, beginning my long search for the truth of the story and flashing light into the long two years ahead.
Carson McCullers