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America is indeed a revelation, though not quite the one that was planned. Given a clean slate, man, it was hoped, would write the future. Instead, he has written his past.

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
Instead
America
Slate
Writing
Quite
Hoped
Would
Written
Planned
Men
Though
Revelation
Future
Revelations
Write
Indeed
Given
Clean
Past

More quotes by Mary McCarthy

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Whenever in history, equality appeared on the agenda, it was exported somewhere else, like an undesirable.
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Sex annihilates identity, and the space given to sex in contemporary novels is an avowal of the absence of character.
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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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To be disesteemed by people you don't have much respect for is not the worst fate.
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...the tourist Venice is Venice.
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If you want to be your own master ... always be surprised by evil never anticipate it.
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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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The suspense in a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist himself, who is intensely curious too about what will happen to the hero.
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For self-realization, a rebel demands a strong authority, a worthy opponent, God to his Lucifer.
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Life is a system of recurrent pairs, the poison and the antidote being eternally packaged together by some considerate heavenly druggist.
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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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There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing.
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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.
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Venice, as a city, was a foundling, floating upon the waters like Moses in his basket among the bulrushes.
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it's easier to forgive your enemies than to forgive your friends.
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love of truth, ordinary common truth recognizable to everyone, is the ruling passion of the novel.
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Life for the European is a career for the American it is a hazard.
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The breakdown of our language, evident in the misuse, i.e., the misunderstanding of nouns and adjectives, is most grave, though perhaps not so conspicuous, in the handling of prepositions, those modest little connectives that hold the parts of a phrase or a sentence together. They are the joints of any language, what make it, literally, articulate.
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It really takes a hero to live any kind of spiritual life without religious belief.
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... the average Catholic perceives no connection between religion and morality, unless it is a question of someone else's morality.
Mary McCarthy