Maybe any action becomes cowardly once you stop to reason about it. Mary McCarthy More Quotes by Mary McCarthy More Quotes From Mary McCarthy The return to a favorite novel is generally tied up with changes in oneself that must be counted as improvements, but have the feel of losses. It is like going back to a favorite house, country, person; nothing is where it belongs, including one's heart. Mary McCarthy readingcountrybook The erotic element always present in fashion, the kiss of loving labor on the body, is now overtly expressed by language. Belts hug or clasp; necklines plunge; jerseys bind. The word exciting tingles everywhere. Mary McCarthy clotheskissingfashion The comic element is the incorrigible element in every human being; the capacity to learn, from experience or instruction, is what is forbidden to all comic creations and to what is comic in you and me. Mary McCarthy creationcomedyelements Europeans used to say Americans were puritanical. Then they discovered that we were not puritans. So now they say that we are obsessed with sex. Mary McCarthy puritanobsessedsex What I really do is take real plums and put them in an imaginary cake. If you're interested in the cake, you get rather annoyed with people saying what species the real plum was. Mary McCarthy cakerealpeople It [Socialism] was a kind of political hockey played by big, gaunt, dyspeptic girls in pants. Mary McCarthy hockeypoliticalgirl 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 despairfinalslooks The perennial wonder of Venice is to peer at herself in her canals and find that she exists-incredible as it seems. It is the same reassurance that a looking-glass offers us: the guarantee that we are real. Mary McCarthy guarantees-thatglassesreal The rationalist mind has always had its doubts about Venice. The watery city receives a dry inspection, as though it were a myth for the credulous- poets and honeymooners. Mary McCarthy venicecitiesdoubt This grossly advertised wonder [Venice], this gold idol with clay feet, this trompe-l'oeil, this painted deception, this cliche-what intelligent iconoclast could fail to experience a destructive impulse in her presence? Mary McCarthy intelligentidolsfeet Venice is the worlds unconscious: a misers glittering hoard, guarded by a Beast whose eyes are made of white agate, and by a saint who is really a prince who has just slain a dragon. Mary McCarthy dragonseyewhite Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished, or if it does, as in the case of the tilled field, this product of human activity requires still more labor, incessant, tireless labor, to maintain its identity as a 'work' of man. Mary McCarthy identitydoemen It really seems to me sometimes that the only hope is space. That is to say, perhaps the most energeticin a bad senseelements will move on to a new world in space. The problems of mass society will be transported into space, leaving behind this world as a kind of Europe, which then eventually tourists will visit. The Old World. I'm only half joking. Mary McCarthy spaceeuropemoving I once started a detective story to make moneybut I couldn't get the murder to take place! At the end of three chapters I was still describing the characters and the milieu, so I thought, this is not going to work. No corpse! Mary McCarthy threestoriescharacter Whenever in history, equality appeared on the agenda, it was exported somewhere else, like an undesirable. Mary McCarthy agendasequalitysomewhere-else In science, all facts no matter how trivial, enjoy democratic equality. Mary McCarthy People with bad consciences always fear the judgement of children. Mary McCarthy The American, if he has a spark of national feeling, will be humiliated by the very prospect of a foreigner's visit to Congress -- these, for the most part, illiterate hacks whose fancy vests are spotted with gravy, and whose speeches, hypocritical, unctuous, and slovenly, are spotted also with the gravy of political patronage, these persons are a reflection on the democratic process rather than of it; they expose it in its process rather than of it; they expose it in its underwear. Mary McCarthy The strongest argument for the un-materialistic character of American life is the fact that we tolerate conditions that are, from a negative point of view, intolerable. What the foreigner finds most objectionable in American life is its lack of basic comfort. No nation with any sense of material well-being would endure the food we eat, the cramped apartments we live in, the noise, the traffic, the crowded subways and buses. American life, in large cities, is a perpetual assault on the senses and the nerves; it is out of asceticism, out of unworldliness, precisely, that we bear it. Mary McCarthy We all live in suspense from day to day In other words, you are the hero of your own story. Mary McCarthy
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