The desire to believe the best of people is a prerequisite for intercourse with strangers; suspicion is reserved for friends.
Mary McCarthyAny sizeable Portuguese town looks like a superstitious bride's finery - something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.
Mary McCarthyIt has to be acknowledged that in capitalist society, with its herds of hippies, originality has become a sort of fringe benefit, a mere convention, accepted obsolescence, the Beatnik model being turned in for the Hippie model, as though strangely obedient to capitalist laws of marketing.
Mary McCarthyIlliteracy at the poverty level (mainly a matter of bad grammar) does not alarm me nearly as much as the illiteracy of the well-to-do.
Mary McCarthy