Collected Stories of Carson McCullers

There is something about a dark cold night that makes you feel close to someone you’re sleeping with.

I suppose I was mean to him lots of times. I guess I wanted to ignore somebody like Maybelle did me

It is impossible to describe Maybelle.

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.

All I had ever felt was gathered together around this woman. Nothing lay around loose in me any more but was finished up by her.

The bookie’s voice was flat and without inflection.

loathed academic fiddle-faddle and committees.

But he would not mold that prescience into thought.

It seemed like if he could put this thing into words he would no longer be a boy with big rough bare feet and hands that hung down clumsy from the outgrown sleeves of his lumberjack.

She reminded him of someone who had been sleepily stumbling through a dark room when a light was turned on.