Mary McCarthy
Mary McCarthy
Mary Therese McCarthywas an American novelist, critic and political activist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth21 June 1912
CitySeattle, WA
CountryUnited States of America
happiness noticing
There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing.
eye curiosity age
Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted.
hero believe next-week
As subjects, we all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story. We cannot believe that it is finished, that we are 'finished,' even though we may say so; we expect another chapter, another installment, tomorrow or next week.
laughter self wind
Laughter is the great antidote for self-pity, maybe a specific for the malady, yet probably it does tend to dry one's feelings out a little, as if by exposing them to a vigorous wind ...
evil want masters
If you want to be your own master ... always be surprised by evil; never anticipate it.
retreat language stammering
Our language, once homely and colloquial, seeks to aggrandize our meanest activities with polysyllabic terms or it retreats from frankness into a stammering verbosity.
cities venice water
Venice, as a city, was a foundling, floating upon the waters like Moses in his basket among the bulrushes.
growing-up lying sleep
this is the spirit of the enchantment under which Venice lies, pearly and roseate, like the Sleeping Beauty, changeless throughout the centuries, arrested, while the concrete forest of the modern world grows up around her.
secret literature given
I'm afraid I'm not sufficiently inhibited about the things that other women are inhibited about for me. They feel that you've given away trade secrets.
together pairs poison
Life is a system of recurrent pairs, the poison and the antidote being eternally packaged together by some considerate heavenly druggist.
equality somewhere-else agendas
Whenever in history, equality appeared on the agenda, it was exported somewhere else, like an undesirable.
sports art hunting
Leisure was the sine qua non of the full Renaissance. The feudal nobility, having lost its martial function, sought diversion all over Europe in cultivated pastimes: sonneteering, the lute, games and acrostics, travel, gentlemanly studies and sports, hunting and hawking, treated as arts.
soul today rooms
The consumer today is the victim of the manufacturer who launches on him a regiment of products for which he must make room in his soul.
sex puritan obsessed
Europeans used to say Americans were puritanical. Then they discovered that we were not puritans. So now they say that we are obsessed with sex.