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
incessant labor behinds
Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished.
laughter tears watches
All dramatic realism is somewhat sadistic; an audience is persuaded to watch something that makes it uncomfortable and from which no relief is offered - no laughter, no tears, no purgation.
spiritual religious hero
It really takes a hero to live any kind of spiritual life without religious belief.
sex character space
Sex annihilates identity, and the space given to sex in contemporary novels is an avowal of the absence of character.
passion ordinary common
love of truth, ordinary common truth recognizable to everyone, is the ruling passion of the novel.
passion facts novelists
The passion for fact in a raw state is a peculiarity of the novelist.
successful past trying
The present can try to bury the past, an operation that is most atrocious when it is most successful.
political speech looks
A politician or political thinker who calls himself a political realist is usually boasting that he sees politics, so to speak, in the raw; he is generally a proclaimed cynic and pessimist who makes it his business to look behind words and fine speeches for the motive. This motive is always low.
wall gun waiting
On the wall of our life together hung a gun waiting to be fired in the final act.
responsibility law judging
Proscription, martial law, the billeting of the rude troops, the tax collector, the unjust judge, anything at all, is sweeter than responsibility.
levels matter poverty
Illiteracy at the poverty level (mainly a matter of bad grammar) does not alarm me nearly as much as the illiteracy of the well-to-do.
rights pleasure states
Once the state is looked upon as the source of rights, rather than their bound protector, freedom becomes conditional on the pleasure of the state.
venice tourists
...the tourist Venice is Venice.
appearance cultivation old-money
Old money is fully as moronic as new money but it has inherited an appearance of cultivation.