Quote

...the tourist Venice is Venice.

Mary McCarthy

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Tourists
Tourist
Venice

More quotes by Mary McCarthy

Image
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.
Mary McCarthy
Image
A society person who is enthusiastic about modern painting or Truman Capote is already half a traitor to his class. It is middle-class people who, quite mistakenly, imagine that a lively pursuit of the latest in reading and painting will advance their status in the world.
Mary McCarthy
Image
From what I have seen, I am driven to the conclusion that religion is only good for good people.
Mary McCarthy
Image
What I really do is take real plums and put them in an imaginary cake.
Mary McCarthy
Image
For me, in fact, the mark of the historic is the nonchalance with which it picks up an individual and deposits him in a trend, like a house playfully moved by a tornado.
Mary McCarthy
Image
Scratch a socialist and you find a snob.
Mary McCarthy
Image
In violence, we forget who we are
Mary McCarthy
Image
A novelist is an elephant, but an elephant who must pretend to forget.
Mary McCarthy
Image
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
Image
The things of this world reveal their essential absurdity when they are put in the Venetian context. In the unreal realm of the canals, as in a Swiftian Lilliput, the real world, with its contrivances, appears as a vast folly.
Mary McCarthy
Image
In moments of despair, we look on ourselves lead-enly as objects we see ourselves, our lives, as someone else might see them and may even be driven to kill ourselves if the separation, the knowledge, seems sufficiently final.
Mary McCarthy
Image
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
Image
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
Image
An unrectified case of injustice has a terrible way of lingering, restlessly, in the social atmosphere like an unfinished question.
Mary McCarthy
Image
Driving a car, you are in danger of killing walking or standing, of being killed.
Mary McCarthy
Image
A good deal of education consists of unlearning-the breaking of bad habits as with a tennis serve.
Mary McCarthy
Image
Venice, as a city, was a foundling, floating upon the waters like Moses in his basket among the bulrushes.
Mary McCarthy
Image
My occupational hazard is that I can't help plagiarizing from real life.
Mary McCarthy
Image
Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the.
Mary McCarthy
Image
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.
Mary McCarthy