01c. 1936 ADBecause 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.Carson McCullers / quote ↗
03c. 1936 ADBut you haven't never loved God nor even nair person. You hard and tough as cowhide. But just the same I knows you. This afternoon you going to roam all over the place without never being satisfied. You going to traipse all around like you haves to find something lost. You going to work yourself up with excitement. Your heart going to beat hard enough to kill you because you don't love and don't have peace. And then some day you going to bust loose and be ruined.Carson McCullers / quote ↗
04c. 1936 ADIt was as though his son cheated him by depriving him of his beloved presence, the sweet and treacherous thief had plundered his heart. If Johnny had died in any other way, cancer or leukaemia… he could have grieved with a clear heart, cried also. But suicide seemed a deliberate act of spite which the Judge resented.Carson McCullers / quote ↗
05c. 1936 ADThe 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 / quote ↗
06c. 1936 ADWe 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 / quote ↗
07c. 1936 ADThere are times when a man's greatest need is to have someone to love, some focal point for his diffused emotions. Also there are times when the irritations, disappointments, and fears of life, restless as spermatozoids, must be released in hate.Carson McCullers / quote ↗
08c. 1936 ADDoctor Copeland belt old evil anger in him. The words rose inchoately to his throat and he could not speak them. They would listen to the old man. Yet to word the reason they will not attend.Carson McCullers / quote ↗
09c. 1936 ADA person can't pick up they children and just squeeze them to which-a-way they wants them to be.Carson McCullers / quote ↗
10c. 1936 ADAfter the first establishment of identity there comes the imperative need to lose this new-found sense of separateness and to belong to something larger and more powerful than the weak, lonely self. The sense of moral isolation is intolerable to us.Carson McCullers / quote ↗
11c. 1936 ADYou mean,' Captain Penderton said, 'that any fulfilment obtained at the expense of normalcy is wrong, and should not be allowed to bring happiness. In short, it is better, because it is morally honourable, for the square peg to keep scraping around the round hole rather than to discover and use the unorthodox square that would fit?'…'I don't agreeCarson McCullers / quote ↗
12c. 1936 ADWonderful music like this was the worst hurt there could be. The whole world was the symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen.Carson McCullers / quote ↗
13c. 1936 ADI feels sorrier for him than anybody I knows. I expect he done read more books than any white man in this town. He done read more books and he done worried about more things. He full of books and worrying. He done lost God and turned his back on religion. His troubles come down just to that.Carson McCullers / quote ↗
14c. 1936 ADThe old bitterness came up in him and he did not have time to cogitate and push it down.Carson McCullers / quote ↗
15c. 1936 ADI got to wear blinders all the time so I won't think sideways or in the past.Carson McCullers / quote ↗
16c. 1936 ADThere was another thing bigger than the tiredness – and this was the strong crew purpose.Carson McCullers / quote ↗
17c. 1936 ADBecause of the insolence of all the white race he was afraid to lose his dignity in friendliness.Carson McCullers / quote ↗
18c. 1936 ADHe waited for the black, terrible anger as though for some beast out of the night. But it did not come to him. His bowels seemed weighted with lead, and he walked slowly and lingered against fences and the cold, wet walls of buildings by the way. Descent into the depths until at last there was no further chasm below. He touched the solid bottom of despair and there took ease.Carson McCullers / quote ↗
19c. 1936 AD... and we are not alone in this slavery. there are millions of others throughout the world, of all colors and races and creeds. this we must remember. there are many of our people who hate the poor of the white race, and they hate us. the people in this town living by the river who work in the mills. people who are almost as much in need as we are ourselves. this hatred is a great evil, and no good can ever come from it... the injustice of need must bring us all together and not separate us. we must remember that we all make the things of this earth of value because of labor.Carson McCullers / quote ↗
20c. 1936 ADIt was the year Frankie thought about the world. And she did not see it as a round school globe, with the countries neat and different-colored. She thought of the world as huge and cracked and looseand turning a thousand miles an hour.Carson McCullers / quote ↗
21c. 1936 ADMaybe that was the trouble. She got the first and biggest share of everything – first whack at the new clothes and the biggest part of any special treat. Hazel never had to grab for anything and she was soft.Carson McCullers / quote ↗
22c. 1936 ADThere is a deeper reason why the café was so precious to this town. And this deeper reason has to do with a certain pride that had not hitherto been known in these parts. To understand this new pride the cheapness of human life must be kept in mind. There were always plenty of people clustered around a mill – but it was seldom that every family had enough meal, garments, and fat back to go the rounds. Life could become one long dim scramble just to get the things needed to keep alive. And the confusing point is this: All useful things have a price, and are bought only with money, as that is the way the world is run. You know without having to reason about it the price of a bale of cotton, or a quart of molasses. 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 / quote ↗
23c. 1936 ADHe was like a man who had served a term in prison or had been to Harvard College or had left for a long time with foreigners in South America. He was like a person who had been somewhere that other people are not likely to go or had done something that others are not apt to do.Carson McCullers / quote ↗
24c. 1936 ADFor the liquor of Miss Amelia has a special quality of its own. It is clean and sharp on the tongue, but once down a man it glows inside him for a long time afterward. And that is not all. It is known that if a message is written with lemon juice on a clean sheet of paper there will be no sign of it. But if the paper is held for a moment to the fire then the letters turn brown and the meaning becomes clear. Imagine that the whisky is the fire and that the message is that which is known only in the soul of a man – then the worth of Miss Amelia's liquor can be understood. Things that have gone unnoticed, thoughts that have been harbored far back in the dark mind, are suddenly recognized and comprehended. A spinner who has thought only of the loom, the dinner pail, the bed, and then the loom again – this spinner might drink some on a Sunday and come across a marsh lily. And in his palm he might hold this flower, examining the golden dainty cup, and in him suddenly might come a sweetness keen as pain. A weaver might look up suddenly and see for the first time the cold, weird radiance of midnight January sky, and a deep fright at his own smallness stop his heart. Such things as these, then, happen when a man has drunk Miss Amelia's liquor. He may suffer, or he may be spent with joy – but the experience has shown the truth; he has warmed his soul and seen the message hidden there.Carson McCullers / quote ↗
