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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.

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
Turn
Predictable
Turns
Unexpected
Others
Theme
Ends
Surprise
Character
Characters
Incorrigible
Give
Personality
Variations
Giving
Eternal
Surprises
Like
Fiction
Variation

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Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the.
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We are a nation of 20 million bathrooms, with a humanist in every tub.
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most people did not care to be taught what they did not already know it made them feel ignorant.
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The rationalist mind has always had its doubts about Venice. The watery city receives a dry inspection, as though it were a myth for the credulous- poets and honeymooners.
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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.
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Scratch a socialist and you find a snob.
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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.
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For self-realization, a rebel demands a strong authority, a worthy opponent, God to his Lucifer.
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People with bad consciences always fear the judgment of children.
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Old money is fully as moronic as new money but it has inherited an appearance of cultivation.
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Morality did not keep well it required stable conditions it was costly it was subject to variations, and the market for it was uncertain.
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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.
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The idea of Macbeth as a conscience-torm ented man is a platitude as false as Macbeth himself. Macbeth has no conscience. His main concern throughout the play is that most selfish of all concerns: to get a good night's sleep.
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We are the hero of our own story.
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It has to be acknowledged that in capitalist society, with its herds of hippies, originality has become a sort of fringe benefit, a mere convention, accepted obsolescence, the Beatnik model being turned in for the Hippie model, as though strangely obedient to capitalist laws of marketing.
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A society person who is enthusiastic about modern painting or Truman Capote is already half a traitor to his class. It is middle-class people who, quite mistakenly, imagine that a lively pursuit of the latest in reading and painting will advance their status in the world.
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The return to a favorite novel is generally tied up with changes in oneself that must be counted as improvements, but have the feel of losses. It is like going back to a favorite house, country, person nothing is where it belongs, including one's heart.
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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.
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My occupational hazard is that I can't help plagiarizing from real life.
Mary McCarthy
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It really takes a hero to live any kind of spiritual life without religious belief.
Mary McCarthy