Carson McCullers was a U.S. novelist, playwright, short story writer, poet and essayist, who lived in the 20th century and is known as a pioneer of the genre of literature now known as 'Southern Gothic'. She was born in the South of the United States and hence most of her stories had a Southern theme. McCullers wanted to study music but later on started off on a writing career while simultaneously working in odd jobs and going to the night classes at Columbia University in New York. Her first published work was the story ‘Wunderkid’ depicting McCullers’ own brush with music. McCullers had a relatively short writing career due to her untimely death at the age of 50 but by that time she had produced a lot of great work that earned her a lot of accolades. Some of her best known works include ‘Reflections of a Golden Eye’, ‘The Ballad of the Sad Café’, ‘The Member of the Wedding’ and ‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter’ among others. She was an author who created a niche for herself in spite of the fact that some of her works received a lot of criticism from intellectuals. Her books, poems, essays and other writings have become popular quotations and are frequently quoted by people. A collection of sayings, thoughts and quotations by Carson McCullers on love, unrequited, longing, caring, reason, demonstrate, wandering, enlightenment, restlessness, sorrow, humanity, life, improvement and childhood.
Maybe when people longed for a thing that bad the longing made them trust in anything that might give it to them.
Carson McCullers
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.
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.
And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being loved is intolerable to many.
Carson McCullers
The trouble with me is that for a long time I have just been an I person. All people belong to a We except me. Not to belong to a We makes you too lonesome.
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
I do not have any home. So why should I be homesick?
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.
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.
