Mary McCarthy

I am putting real plums into an imaginary cake.

— Mary McCarthy

Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted.

— Mary McCarthy

In violence, we forget who we are

— Mary McCarthy

...the tourist Venice is Venice.

— Mary McCarthy

Scratch a socialist and you find a snob.

— Mary McCarthy

We are the hero of our own story.

— Mary McCarthy

In morals as in politics anarchy is not for the weak.

— Mary McCarthy

Every word she writes is a lie, including "and" and "the."

— Mary McCarthy

What's the use of falling in love if you both remain inertly as you were?

— Mary McCarthy

it's easier to forgive your enemies than to forgive your friends.

— Mary McCarthy

If someone tells you he is going to make a realistic decision, you immediately understand that he is going to do something…

— Mary McCarthy

Driving a car, you are in danger of killing; walking or standing, of being killed.

— Mary McCarthy

Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof.

— Mary McCarthy

There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing.

— Mary McCarthy

Life for the European is a career; for the American it is a hazard.

— Mary McCarthy

“She considered [her] life, which had not been a life but only a sort of greeting, a Hello There.”

— Mary McCarthy

this is the spirit of the enchantment under which Venice lies, pearly and roseate, like the Sleeping Beauty, changeless throughout the centuries,…

— Mary McCarthy

I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you're older, I think,…

— Mary McCarthy

Proscription, martial law, the billeting of the rude troops, the tax collector, the unjust judge, anything at all, is sweeter than responsibility.

— Mary McCarthy

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

America is indeed a revelation, though not quite the one that was planned. Given a clean slate, man, it was hoped, would…

— Mary McCarthy

With extramarital courtship, the deception was prolonged where it had been ephemeral, necessary where it had been frivolous, conspiratorial where it had…

— Mary McCarthy

The labor of keeping house is labor in its most naked state, for labor is toil that never finishes, toil that has…

— Mary McCarthy

If someone tells you he is going to make a ealistic decision, you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something…

— Mary McCarthy

The breakdown of our language, evident in the misuse, i.e., the misunderstanding of nouns and adjectives, is most grave, though perhaps not…

— Mary McCarthy

it came to me, as we sat there, glumly ordering lunch, that for extremely stupid people anti-Semitism was a form of intellectuality,…

— Mary McCarthy

The strongest argument for the unmaterialistic character of American life is . . . that we tolerate conditions that are, from a…

— Mary McCarthy

I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you're older, I think,…

— Mary McCarthy

The strongest argument for the un-materialistic character of American life is the fact that we tolerate conditions that are, from a materialistic…

— Mary McCarthy

As subjects, we all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero…

— Mary McCarthy

It has to be acknowledged that in capitalist society, with its herds of hippies, originality has become a sort of fringe benefit,…

— Mary McCarthy

“She felt really quite unequal to the tedious process of reconciliation which, in view of the fact that she was sorry, seemed…

— Mary McCarthy

“This humanity we would claim for ourselves is the legacy, not only of the Enlightenment, but of the thousands of European peasants…

— Mary McCarthy

“I would have said that Eichmann was profoundly, egregiously stupid, and for me stupidity is not the same as having a low…

— Mary McCarthy

I am for the ones who represent sense, and so was Jane Austen.

— Mary McCarthy

The happy ending is our national belief.

— Mary McCarthy

We all live in suspense from day to day; in other words, you are the hero of your own story.

— Mary McCarthy

Venice, as a city, was a foundling, floating upon the waters like Moses in his basket among the bulrushes.

— Mary McCarthy

Whenever in history, equality appeared on the agenda, it was exported somewhere else, like an undesirable.

— Mary McCarthy

Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.

— Mary McCarthy