Annie

“But now no music was in her mind. That was a funny thing. It was like she was shut out from the inside room. Sometimes a quick little tune would come and go - but she never went into the inside room with music like she used to do. It was like she was too tense. Or maybe because it was like the store took all her energy and time . . . She wanted to stay in the inside room but she didn't know how. It was like the inside room was locked somewhere away from her. A very hard thing to understand.”
― Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

“He had first come into the house with her whom he loved. And Daisy was dressed in her bridal gown and wore a white lace veil. Her skin was a beautiful colour of dark honey and her laughter was sweet. At night he had shut himself in the bright room to study alone. He had tried to cogitate and to discipline himself to study. But with Daisy near him there was a strong desire in him that would not go away with study.”
― Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

“Why? Why was it that in cases of real love the one who is left does not more often follow the beloved by suicide? Only because the living must bury the dead? Because of the measured rites that must be fulfilled after a death? Because it is as though the one who is left steps for a time upon a stage and each second swells to an unlimited amount of time and he id watched by many eyes? Because there is a function he must carry out? Or perhaps, when there is love, the widowed must stay for the resurrection of the beloved - so that the one who has gone is not really dead, but grows and is created for a second time in the soul of the living? Why?”
― Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

“But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe