most people did not care to be taught what they did not already know; it made them feel ignorant.
Mary McCarthyAs soon as you become a writer, you lose contact with ordinary experience or tend to. ... the worst fate of a writer is to become a writer.
Mary McCarthyA society person who is enthusiastic about modern painting or Truman Capote is already half a traitor to his class. It is middle-class people who, quite mistakenly, imagine that a lively pursuit of the latest in reading and painting will advance their status in the world.
Mary McCarthyProscription, martial law, the billeting of the rude troops, the tax collector, the unjust judge, anything at all, is sweeter than responsibility.
Mary McCarthy