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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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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
Everything
Irreducible
Mean
Recognizable
Thing
Style
Really
Courses
Always
Course
Alive
Voice
Means

More quotes by 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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Scratch a socialist and you find a snob.
Mary McCarthy
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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.
Mary McCarthy
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In violence, we forget who we are
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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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 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.
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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Leisure was the sine qua non of the full Renaissance. The feudal nobility, having lost its martial function, sought diversion all over Europe in cultivated pastimes: sonneteering, the lute, games and acrostics, travel, gentlemanly studies and sports, hunting and hawking, treated as arts.
Mary McCarthy
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We are the hero of our own story.
Mary McCarthy
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What I really do is take real plums and put them in an imaginary cake.
Mary McCarthy
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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.
Mary McCarthy
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Venice is the worlds unconscious: a misers glittering hoard, guarded by a Beast whose eyes are made of white agate, and by a saint who is really a prince who has just slain a dragon.
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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Life for the European is a career for the American it is a hazard.
Mary McCarthy
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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.
Mary McCarthy
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I shall never send for a priest or recite an Act of Contrition in my last moments. I do not mind if I lose my soul for all eternity. If the kind of God exists Who would damn me for not working out a deal with Him, then that is unfortunate. I should not care to spend eternity in the company of such a person.
Mary McCarthy
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Old money is fully as moronic as new money but it has inherited an appearance of cultivation.
Mary McCarthy
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A good deal of education consists of unlearning-the breaking of bad habits as with a tennis serve.
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