Laughter is the great antidote for self-pity, maybe a specific for the malady, yet probably it does tend to dry one's feelings… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
If one means by style the voice, the irreducible and always recognizable and alive thing, then of course style is really everything. — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
If you talked or laughed in church, told lies, had impure thoughts or conversations, you were bad; if you obeyed your parents… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
I was going to get myself recognized at any price. If I could not win fame by goodness, I was ready to… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
If you want to be your own master ... always be surprised by evil; never anticipate it. — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
What I really do is take real plums and put them in an imaginary cake. If you're interested in the cake, you… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
In moments of despair, we look on ourselves lead-enly as objects; we see ourselves, our lives, as someone else might see them… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
I shall never send for a priest or recite an Act of Contrition in my last moments. I do not mind if… — 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
