The relation between life and literature - a final antimony - is one of mutual plagiarism. — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
... it was religion that saved me. Our ugly church and parochial school provided me with my only aesthetic outlet, in the… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
The return to a favorite novel is generally tied up with changes in oneself that must be counted as improvements, but have… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
The suspense of a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist, who is intensely curious about what will… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
The suspense in a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist himself, who is intensely curious too about… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
love of truth, ordinary common truth recognizable to everyone, is the ruling passion of the novel. — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
For both writer and reader, the novel is a lonely, physically inactive affair. Only the imagination races. — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
Sex annihilates identity, and the space given to sex in contemporary novels is an avowal of the absence of character. — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
From what I have seen, I am driven to the conclusion that religion is only good for good people. — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
Yet friendship, I believe, is essential to intellectuals. It is probably the growth hormone the mind requires as it begins its activity of producing… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
Any sizeable Portuguese town looks like a superstitious bride's finery - something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue. — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
The desire to believe the best of people is a prerequisite for intercourse with strangers; suspicion is reserved for friends. — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
“She considered [her] life, which had not been a life but only a sort of greeting, a Hello There.” — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
America is indeed a revelation, though not quite the one that was planned. Given a clean slate, man, it was hoped, would write the… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
Making love, we are all more alike than we are when we are talking or acting. — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
... in America ... children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
The only form of action open to a child is to break something or strike someone, its mother or another child; it cannot cause… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
Combativeness was, I suppose, the dominant trait in my grandmother's nature. An aggressive churchgoer, she was quite without Christian feeling; the mercy of the… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
