Carson McCullers - The Ballad of the Sad Café (1951)

31 Sourced Quotes

View all Carson McCullers Quotes
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
We live in the richest country in the world. There's plenty and to spare for no man, woman, or child to be in want. And in addition to this our country was founded on what should have been a great, true principle - the freedom, equality, and rights of each individual. Huh! And what has come of that start? There are corporations worth billions of dollars - and hundreds of thousands of people who don't get to eat.

Carson McCullers
People, unless they are nilly-willy or very sick, cannot be taken into the hands and be changed overnight into somthing more worth-while and profitable.

Carson McCullers
For you see, when us people who know run into each other that's an event. It almost never happens. Sometimes we meet each other and neither guesses that the other is one who knows. That's a bad thing. It's happened to me a lot of times. But you see there are so few of us.

Carson McCullers
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
The value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.

Carson McCullers
Wherever you look there's meanness and corruption. This room, this bottle of grape wine, these fruits in the basket, are all products of profit and loss. A fellow can't live without giving his passive acceptance to meanness. Somebody wears his tail to a frazzle for every mouthful we eat and every stitch we wear—and nobody seems to know. Everybody is blind, dumb, and blunt-headed—stupid and mean.

Carson McCullers
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.

Carson McCullers
Because in some men it is in them to give up everything personal at some time, before it ferments and poisons—throw it to some human being or some human idea. They have to.

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

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

Carson McCullers
If you walk along the main street on an August afternoon there is nothing whatsoever to do.

Carson McCullers
When a person knows and can't make the others understand, what does he do?

Carson McCullers
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.

Carson McCullers
There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries.

Carson McCullers
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
I want - I want - I want - was all that she could think about - but just what this real want was she did not know.

Carson McCullers
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
But all the time-no matter what she was doing-there was music.

Carson McCullers
His own life seemed so solitary, a fragile column supporting nothing amidst the wreckage of the years.

Carson McCullers
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
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
There is no stillness like the quiet of the first cold nights in the fall.

Carson McCullers
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
I meditated on love and reasoned it out. I realized what is wrong with us. Men fall in love for the first time. And what do they fall in love with?...They fall in love with a woman. They start at the wrong end of love. They begin at the climax. Can you wonder it is so miserable? Do you know how men should love? A tree. A rock. A cloud.

Carson McCullers
But no value has been put on human life; it is given to us free and taken without being paid for. What is it worth? If you look around, at times the value may seem to be little or nothing at all. Often after you have sweated and tried and things are not better for you, there comes a feeling deep down in the soul that you are not worth much.

Carson McCullers
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
And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being loved is intolerable to many.

Carson McCullers
Once you have lived with another, it is a great torture to have to live alone.

Carson McCullers
People felt themselves watching him even before they knew that there was anything different about him. His eyes made a person think that he heard things that no one else had ever heard, that he knew things no one had ever guessed before. He did not seem quite human.

Carson McCullers