Carson McCullers citations

Page 2

“A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lillies of the swamp.”

“My advice to you is this. Do not attempt to stand alone…. The most fatal thing a man can do is try to stand alone.”

“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.”

“The thinking mind is best controlled by the imagination.”

“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.”

“There are all these people here I don't know by sight or by name. And we pass alongside each other and don't have any connection. And they don't know me and I don't know them. And now I'm leaving town and there are all these people I will never know.”

“There was hope in him, and soon perhaps the outline of his journey would take form.”

“But all the time-no matter what she was doing-there was music.”

“It is music that causes the heart to broaden and the listener to grow cold with ecstasy and fright.”

“There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book.”

“The mind is like a richly woven tapestry in which the colors are distilled from the experiences of the senses, and the design drawn from the convolutions of the intellect.”

“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.”

“It was better to be in a jail where you could bang the walls than in a jail you could not see.”

“The value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.”