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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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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
Guilt
Lambs
Innocent
Dictator
Pray
Masses
Hypocritically
Praying
Oppressed
Groaning
Mass
Tyranny
Scapegoat
Authority
Absolutes
Assumes
Also
Assuming
Deliverance
Absolute
Yoke

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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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We are a nation of 20 million bathrooms, with a humanist in every tub.
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The theater is the only branch of art much cared for by people of wealth like canasta, it does away with the brother of talk after dinner.
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love of truth, ordinary common truth recognizable to everyone, is the ruling passion of the novel.
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If you want to be your own master ... always be surprised by evil never anticipate it.
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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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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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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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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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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.
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From what I have seen, I am driven to the conclusion that religion is only good for good people.
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My occupational hazard is that I can't help plagiarizing from real life.
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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.
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We are the hero of our own story.
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Like Michelangelo and Cellini, Florentines of every station are absorbed in acquiring real estate: a little apartment that can be rented to foreigners a farm that will supply the owner with oil, wine, fruit, and flowers for the house.
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Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted. Spicy court-memoirs, the lives of gallant ladies, recollections of an ex-nun, a monk's confession, an atheist's repentance, true-to-life accounts of prostitution and bastardy gave our ancestors a penny peep into the forbidden room.
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The desire to believe the best of people is a prerequisite for intercourse with strangers suspicion is reserved for friends.
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The passion for fact in a raw state is a peculiarity of the novelist.
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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.
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it's easier to forgive your enemies than to forgive your friends.
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