What I really do is take real plums and put them in an imaginary cake. — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
The things of this world reveal their essential absurdity when they are put in the Venetian context. In the unreal realm of… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
Like Michelangelo and Cellini, Florentines of every station are absorbed in acquiring real estate: a little apartment that can be rented to… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
Feminism is ridiculous. Feminists are silly idealists who want to be on top. There is no real equality in sexual relationships -… — 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
My occupational hazard is that I can't help plagiarizing from real life. — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
The perennial wonder of Venice is to peer at herself in her canals and find that she exists-incredible as it seems. It… — 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
