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We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour in other words, we are the hero of our own story.

Mary McCarthy

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Mary McCarthy
Age: 77 †
Born: 1912
Born: June 21
Died: 1989
Died: October 25
Author
Autobiographer
Critic
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Seattle
Washington
Mary Therese McCarthy
Life
Suspense
Individuality
Hour
Hero
Story
Words
Stories
Live

More quotes by Mary McCarthy

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I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you're older, I think, is that - how to express this - you really must make the self.
Mary McCarthy
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Proscription, martial law, the billeting of the rude troops, the tax collector, the unjust judge, anything at all, is sweeter than responsibility.
Mary McCarthy
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If someone tells you he is going to make a 'realistic decision', you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad.
Mary McCarthy
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Modern neurosis began with the discoveries of Copernicus. Science made men feel small by showing him that the earth was not the center of the universe.
Mary McCarthy
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...the tourist Venice is Venice.
Mary McCarthy
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If one means by style the voice, the irreducible and always recognizable and alive thing, then of course style is really everything.
Mary McCarthy
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Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted. Spicy court-memoirs, the lives of gallant ladies, recollections of an ex-nun, a monk's confession, an atheist's repentance, true-to-life accounts of prostitution and bastardy gave our ancestors a penny peep into the forbidden room.
Mary McCarthy
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Driving a car, you are in danger of killing walking or standing, of being killed.
Mary McCarthy
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It really takes a hero to live any kind of spiritual life without religious belief.
Mary McCarthy
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I really tried, or so I thought, to avoid lying, but it seemed to me that they forced it on me by the difference in their vision of things, so that I was always transposing reality for them into something they could understand.
Mary McCarthy
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most people did not care to be taught what they did not already know it made them feel ignorant.
Mary McCarthy
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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.
Mary McCarthy
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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.
Mary McCarthy
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With extramarital courtship, the deception was prolonged where it had been ephemeral, necessary where it had been frivolous, conspiratorial where it had been lonely.
Mary McCarthy
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Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the.
Mary McCarthy
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The desire to believe the best of people is a prerequisite for intercourse with strangers suspicion is reserved for friends.
Mary McCarthy
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For both writer and reader, the novel is a lonely, physically inactive affair. Only the imagination races.
Mary McCarthy
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What's the use of falling in love if you both remain inertly as you were?
Mary McCarthy
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Feminism is ridiculous. Feminists are silly idealists who want to be on top. There is no real equality in sexual relationships - someone always wins.
Mary McCarthy
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The happy ending is our national belief.
Mary McCarthy