Carson McCullers Quotes

No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why.

I wanted to communicate and connect. I simply didn't seem able to do it.

Sometimes, when I open my mouth, all hell breaks loose. Other times, I feel like a voice in the wilderness and I wonder, 'Does anybody get this?'

I am not good at making people understand certain things.

I did a show in Germany, and some kid - he was disabled - he was actually in a wheelchair, and he came out to my show, and he couldn't get across to me what he was trying to say, and you could see that he was frustrated because he couldn't fully express himself, and I just felt like, 'Wow, he's just really passionate about me.'

There are a great many people who do not understand things so there is no use in telling them.

I really do wish people could understand me some day.

I'd tell you all you want and more, if the sounds I made could be what you hear

To understand is nothing, but to be understood-that is the problem and the source of anguish. The soul throbs and would have the other know-but can not and feels isolated. Then come gestures, words, awkward explanations and material symbols for imponderable outbursts of feeling-and the soul despairs.

Nobody listens anymore. I can't talk to the walls because they're yelling at me, I can't talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough it'll make sense. And I want you to teach me to understand what I read.

The hardest times for me were not when people challenged what I said, but when I felt my voice was not heard.

I know of nothing more moving, indeed semi-tragic, than the yearning helplessness in the face of a dog, who understands what is said to him, and can not answer!

When we use terms we get confused, yet we have no other way.

Not understanding anything is terrible, because I communicate very much in my real life.

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

We're really all alone. We can't ever get inside another person's spirit, and see the world they do. So we are alone in that sense. The only way we have to communicate feelings is through words.

He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.

I hate not managing to speak clearly. I really hate it. I get a feeling of claustrophobia - like I'm locked in my own head - if what I've said hasn't reached someone.

You don't know what it's like to be me.

I can't get on girls' wavelengths at all. I think we are completely different. I don't know, maybe that's the way it should be. If we could all get along occasionally though, that would be nice.

If you keep an open mind, you can learn so much from the people around you.

Really, it's not people who don't understand us who drive us nuts—it's when those who shouldn't, do.

I think the whole glory of writing lies in the fact that it forces us out of ourselves and into the lives of others.

An ancient father says that a dog we know is better company than a man whose language we do not understand.

Don't express your ideas too clearly. Most people think little of what they understand, and venerate what they do not.