Carson McCullers - Heart Quotes

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

Carson McCullers
Three words were in the captain's heart. He shaped them soundlessly with his trembling lips, as he had not breath to spare for a whisper, 'I am lost.' And having given up life, the captain suddenly began to live.

Carson McCullers
But the hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into curious shapes. The heart of a hurt child can shrink so that forever afterward it is hard and pitted as the seed of a peach. Or again, the heart of such a child may fester and swell until it is a misery to carry within the body, easily chafed and hurt by the most ordinary things.

Carson McCullers
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.

Carson McCullers
And his heart balanced between pity and the natural instinct for separation that divides the sound from the infirm.

Carson McCullers
The hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into curious shapes.

Carson McCullers
The music left only this bad hurt in her, and a blankness. She could not remember any of the symphony, not even the last few notes. She tried to remember, but no sound at all came to her. Now that it was over there was only her heart like a rabbit and this terrible hurt.

Carson McCullers