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
europe america negative
The immense popularity of American movies abroad demonstrates that Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof
children past reality
To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.
careers hazards
Life for the European is a career; for the American it is a hazard.
justice atmosphere way
An unrectified case of injustice has a terrible way of lingering, restlessly, in the social atmosphere like an unfinished question.
falling-in-love fall use
What's the use of falling in love if you both remain inertly as you were?
tree mind age
You can date the evolving life of a mind, like the age of a tree, by the rings of friendship formed by the expanding central trunk.
belief happy-endings
The happy ending is our national belief.
freedom liberty opinion
Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.
class humanity suffering
In verity we are the poor. This humanity we would claim for ourselves is the legacy, not only of the Enlightenment, but of the thousands and thousands of European peasants and poor townspeople who came here bringing their humanity and their sufferings with them. It is the absence of a stable upper class that is responsible for much of the vulgarity of the American scene. Should we blush before the visitor for this deficiency?
fate people worst
To be disesteemed by people you don't have much respect for is not the worst fate.
military politics retreat
In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.
hero suspense-novels novelists
The suspense of a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist, who is intensely curious about what will happen to the hero.
character giving personality
Others are to us like the characters in fiction, eternal and incorrigible; the surprises they give us turn out in the end to have been predictable and unexpected variations on the theme of being themselves.
character eye air
The American character looks always as if it had just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has all too much a professional air.