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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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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
Whose
Venice
Eyes
Guarded
Eye
Dragons
White
Prince
Hoard
Made
Worlds
Slain
Really
Beast
Glittering
World
Unconscious
Misers
Saint
Dragon

More quotes by Mary McCarthy

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Sex annihilates identity, and the space given to sex in contemporary novels is an avowal of the absence of character.
Mary McCarthy
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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.
Mary McCarthy
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If you want to be your own master ... always be surprised by evil never anticipate it.
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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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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The passion for fact in a raw state is a peculiarity of the novelist.
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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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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... the average Catholic perceives no connection between religion and morality, unless it is a question of someone else's morality.
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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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.
Mary McCarthy
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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.
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 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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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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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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Calling someone a monster does not make him more guilty it makes him less so by classing him with beasts and devils.
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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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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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