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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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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
Courtship
Ephemeral
Frivolous
Deception
Lonely
Necessary
Conspiratorial
Prolonged

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... the average Catholic perceives no connection between religion and morality, unless it is a question of someone else's morality.
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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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We are a nation of 20 million bathrooms, with a humanist in every tub.
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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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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 strongest argument for the un-materialistic character of American life is that we tolerate conditions that are, from a materialistic point of view, intolerable.
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If you want to be your own master ... always be surprised by evil never anticipate it.
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I'm afraid I'm not sufficiently inhibited about the things that other women are inhibited about for me. They feel that you've given away trade secrets.
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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.
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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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For both writer and reader, the novel is a lonely, physically inactive affair. Only the imagination races.
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The erotic element always present in fashion, the kiss of loving labor on the body, is now overtly expressed by language. Belts hug or clasp necklines plunge jerseys bind. The word exciting tingles everywhere.
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My occupational hazard is that I can't help plagiarizing from real life.
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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.
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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.
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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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To be disesteemed by people you don't have much respect for is not the worst fate.
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Driving a car, you are in danger of killing walking or standing, of being killed.
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An unrectified case of injustice has a terrible way of lingering, restlessly, in the social atmosphere like an unfinished question.
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In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.
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