Mary McCarthy Quotes About Literature

Quotes about: Literature

• In science, all facts, no matter how trivial or banal, enjoy democratic equality.

  Mary McCarthy

  Science, Equality, Literature

  Mary McCarthy (1964). “The humanist in the bathtub”

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

  Mary McCarthy

  Funny, Lying, Writing

  Dick Cavett Show (television program), Jan. 1980.

• Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.

  Mary McCarthy

  Freedom, Liberty, Literature

  Mary McCarthy (1961). “On the contrary”, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy

• The Crucifixion and other historical precedents notwithstanding, many of us still believe that outstanding goodness is a kind of armor, that virtue, seen plain and bare, gives pause to criminality. But perhaps it is the other way around.

  Mary McCarthy

  Believe, Giving, Historical

  Mary McCarthy (1961). “On the contrary”, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy

• When an American heiress wants to buy a man, she at once crosses the Atlantic. The only really materialistic people I have ever met have been Europeans.

  Mary McCarthy

  Men, People, Literature

  On the Contrary (1961) "America the Beautiful"

• I'm afraid I'm not sufficiently inhibited about the things that other women are inhibited about for me. They feel that you've given away trade secrets.

  Mary McCarthy

  Secret, Literature, Given

  Look Magazine, February 26, 1964.

• The immense popularity of American movies abroad demonstrates that Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof

  Mary McCarthy

  Europe, America, Negative

  "America the Beautiful: The Humanist in the Bathtub" (1947)

• 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

  Men, Identity, Doe

  Mary McCarthy (1961). “On the contrary”, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy

• The relation between life and literature - a final antimony - is one of mutual plagiarism.

  Mary McCarthy

  Finals, Literature, Plagiarism

• The theater is the only branch of art much cared for by people of wealth; like canasta, it does away with the brother of talk after dinner.

  Mary McCarthy

  Art, Brother, People

  "Up the Ladder from Charm to Vogue". Mary McCarthy, The Reporter Magazine, July 1950.

• Being abroad makes you conscious of the whole imitative side of human behavior. The ape in man.

  Mary McCarthy

  Men, Literature, Apes

  Mary McCarthy (2017). “Mary McCarthy: Novels 1963-1979”, p.414, Library of America

• I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you're older, I think, is that - how to express this - you really must make the self.

  Mary McCarthy

  Thinking, Self, Literature

  Interview with Elisabeth Niebuhr (March 1961) in "Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Second Series", 1963.

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