“This was her, Mick Kelly, walking in the daytime and by herself at night. In the hot sun and in the dark with all the plans and feelings. This music was her—the real plain her…This music did not take a long time or a short time. It did not have anything to do with time going by at all. She sat with her arms around her legs, biting her salty knee very hard. The whole world was this symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen… Now that it was over there was only her heart beating like a rabbit and this terrible hurt.” From The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
“The late autumn sun laid a radiant haze over the new sodded winter grass of the lawn, and even in the woods the sun shone through places where the leaves were not so dense, to make fiery golden patterns on the ground. The suddenly the sun was gone. There was a chill in the air and a light, pure wind. It was time for retreat. From far away came the sound of the bugle, clarified by distance and echoing in the woods with a lost hollow tone. The night was near at hand.” From Reflections in a Golden Eye
“A last difference about that morning was the way her world seemed layered in three different parts, all the twelve years of the old Frankie, the present day itself, and the future ahead when the three of them would be together in all the many distant places.” From The Member of the Wedding
Carson McCullers’s novels deal with loss, with the flaws of human beings. No character in any of her novels or stories are complete, each has an obvious handicap (physical, emotional or otherwise). The style is not sentimentalized, as one could so easily imagine with the themes of loneliness and southern poverty. Rather the poetry itself seems to come from the southern culture that she wrote about: sadness, romanticism, humor, stark reality combine to form a fluid but lucid style. McCullers wrote of her stylethat, “The writer by nature of his profession is a dreamer and a conscious dreamer. He must imagine, and imagination takes humility, love and great courage. How can you create a character without living and the struggle that goes with love?”
Further information about the life and work of Carson McCullers can be found at the website The Carson McCullers Project: http://www.carson-mccullers.com/