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
pain memories thinking
When you have committed an action that you cannot bear to think about, that causes you to writhe in retrospect, do not seek to evade the memory: make yourself relive it, confront it repeatedly over and over, till finally, you will discover, through sheer repetition it loses its power to pain you. It works, I guarantee you, this sure-fire guilt-eradicator, like a homeopathic medicine - like in small doses applied to like. It works, but I am not sure that it is a good thing.
winning fame goodness
I was going to get myself recognized at any price. If I could not win fame by goodness, I was ready to do it by badness.
anarchy moral weak
In morals as in politics anarchy is not for the weak.
stupid lunch people
it came to me, as we sat there, glumly ordering lunch, that for extremely stupid people anti-Semitism was a form of intellectuality, the sole form of intellectuality of which they were capable. It represented, in a rudimentary way, the ability to make categories, to generalize.
elements comedy creation
The comic element is the incorrigible element in every human being; the capacity to learn, from experience or instruction, is what is forbidden to all comic creations and to what is comic in you and me.
action reason cowardice
Maybe any action becomes cowardly once you stop to reason about it.
education learning people
most people did not care to be taught what they did not already know; it made them feel ignorant.
scratches socialism socialist
Scratch a socialist and you find a snob.
literature finals plagiarism
The relation between life and literature - a final antimony - is one of mutual plagiarism.
lonely race imagination
For both writer and reader, the novel is a lonely, physically inactive affair. Only the imagination races.
guilt yoke lambs
The dictator is also the scapegoat; in assuming absolute authority, he assumes absolute guilt; and the oppressed masses, groaning under the yoke, know themselves to be innocent as lambs, while they pray hypocritically for deliverance.
character views life-is
The strongest argument for the un-materialistic character of American life is that we tolerate conditions that are, from a materialistic point of view, intolerable.
tired men faces
Who are the advertising men kidding, besides the European tourist? Between the tired, sad, gentle faces of the subway riders and the grinning Holy Families of the Ad-Mass, there exists no possibility of even a wishful identification.
humanity tubs bathroom
We are a nation of 20 million bathrooms, with a humanist in every tub.