Carson McCullers Quotes

In jail I was just like everybody else, I was sitting there praying, feeling caged.

There's no way out of here.

You are all in jail. Each alone, solitary, with a heap of what he owns. You live in prison, die in prison. It is all I can see in your eyes - the wall, the wall!

They weren't crazy. They were tired of being locked up. Even I could see that.

In prison, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.

I happen to be pretty productive when I am in jail. When you are in jail, you have to spend more time with yourself.

I've wanted somehow to convey to you the sensations - the atmospheric pressure, you might say - of what it is to be seriously a long-term prisoner in an American prison.

On some days in prison you might just need to get out of there, but on some days - not all days, but some - you might be able to see the sky and see the blue in it.

I really don't like being in jail.

No one cares about you when you're in jail.

I reached the point where I was getting arrested all the time in London. I couldn't walk down the street. London becomes a very small village, eventually. You run out of places. It was inescapable.

Those who build walls are their own prisoners.

There is nothing like the bootless solitude of those who are caged together.

For being a bad student I was banished to the 'calaboose' - a bare cell with whitewashed walls and a bench to sit on. I liked it there, because I took along a sketch pad and drew incessantly I could have stayed there forever drawing without stopping

She'd never have allowed herself to be held by anything as mundane as a few bars and a reinforced door

The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.

I am caught like a beast at bay. Somewhere are people, freedom, light, But all I hear is the baying of the pack, There is no way out for me.

The formula for prison is a lack of space counterbalanced by a surplus of time. This is what really bothers you, that you can't win. Prison is lack of alternatives, and the telescopic predictability of the future is what drives you crazy.

When you lose your freedom, you lose, first and foremost, the opportunity to choose the company you keep.

None of you understand. I'm not locked up in here with YOU. You're locked up in here with ME.

Some times I think this whole world Is one big prison yeard Some of us are prisoners The rest of us are guards

A world without open country would be universal jail.

PRISON, n. A place of punishments and rewards. The poet assures us that - stone walls do not a prison make.

The whole earth is in jail and we're plotting this incredible jailbreak.

I open the door of the cell and go. I am so bowed I only see my feet, if I open my eyes, and between my legs a little trail of black dust. I say to myself that the earth is extinguished, though I never saw it lit.