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
christian jesus war
Combativeness was, I suppose, the dominant trait in my grandmother's nature. An aggressive churchgoer, she was quite without Christian feeling; the mercy of the Lord Jesus had never entered her heart. Her piety was an act of war against Protestant ascendancy. ...The teachings of the Church did not interest her, except as they were a rebuke to others ...
easter prayer latin
... it was religion that saved me. Our ugly church and parochial school provided me with my only aesthetic outlet, in the words ofthe Mass and the litanies and the old Latin hymns, in the Easter lilies around the altar, rosaries, ornamented prayer books, votive lamps, holy cards stamped in gold and decorated with flower wreaths and a saint's picture.
happy children america
... in America ... children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.
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.