it came to me, as we sat there, glumly ordering lunch, that for extremely stupid people anti-Semitism was a form of intellectuality, the sole form of intellectuality of which they were capable. It represented, in a rudimentary way, the ability to make categories, to generalize.
Mary McCarthyThe strongest argument for the un-materialistic character of American life is that we tolerate conditions that are, from a materialistic point of view, intolerable.
Mary McCarthyThe 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 McCarthyAll ideas advanced to deal with the Florentine noise problem, the Florentine traffic problem, are Utopian, and nobody believes in them, just as nobody believed in Machiavelli's Prince, a Utopian image of the ideally self-interested despot.
Mary McCarthyLaughter is the great antidote for self-pity, maybe a specific for the malady, yet probably it does tend to dry one's feelings out a little, as if by exposing them to a vigorous wind.
Mary McCarthyBeing abroad makes you conscious of the whole imitative side of human behavior. The ape in man.
Mary McCarthyLife is a system of recurrent pairs, the poison and the antidote being eternally packaged together by some considerate heavenly druggist.
Mary McCarthyFor me, in fact, the mark of the historic is the nonchalance with which it picks up an individual and deposits him in a trend, like a house playfully moved by a tornado.
Mary McCarthyThe relation between life and literature - a final antimony - is one of mutual plagiarism.
Mary McCarthyThe desire to believe the best of people is a prerequisite for intercourse with strangers; suspicion is reserved for friends.
Mary McCarthyOnce the state is looked upon as the source of rights, rather than their bound protector, freedom becomes conditional on the pleasure of the state.
Mary McCarthyWho are the advertising men kidding, besides the European tourist? Between the tired, sad, gentle faces of the subway riders and the grinning Holy Families of the Ad-Mass, there exists no possibility of even a wishful identification.
Mary McCarthyVenice 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 McCarthyAs subjects, we all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story. We cannot believe that it is finished, that we are 'finished,' even though we may say so; we expect another chapter, another installment, tomorrow or next week.
Mary McCarthyThe American character looks always as if it had just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has all too much a professional air.
Mary McCarthyBe truthful... and pay attention. I would also recommend the avoidance of credit cards.
Mary McCarthyModern neurosis began with the discoveries of Copernicus. Science made men feel small by showing him that the earth was not the center of the universe.
Mary McCarthyLeisure was the sine qua non of the full Renaissance. The feudal nobility, having lost its martial function, sought diversion all over Europe in cultivated pastimes: sonneteering, the lute, games and acrostics, travel, gentlemanly studies and sports, hunting and hawking, treated as arts.
Mary McCarthyThe 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 McCarthyThe consumer today is the victim of the manufacturer who launches on him a regiment of products for which he must make room in his soul.
Mary McCarthyThe exile is a singular, whereas refugees tend to be thought of in the mass ... What is implied in these nuances of social standing is the respect we pay to choice. The exile appears to have made a decision, while the refugee is the very image of helplessness.
Mary McCarthyThe immense popularity of American movies abroad demonstrates that Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof
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 McCarthyThe furniture and trappings in the apartment are all in a state of flux - here today, gone tomorrow. Nothing is anchored to its place, not even the coffee-pot, which floats off and returns, on the tide of the signora's marine nature.
Mary McCarthyThe labor of keeping house is labor in its most naked state, for labor is toil that never finishes, toil that has to be begun again the moment it is completed, toil that is destroyed and consumed by the life process
Mary McCarthyFeminism is ridiculous. Feminists are silly idealists who want to be on top. There is no real equality in sexual relationships - someone always wins.
Mary McCarthyI 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 McCarthySex annihilates identity, and the space given to sex in contemporary novels is an avowal of the absence of character.
Mary McCarthyWhenever in history, equality appeared on the agenda, it was exported somewhere else, like an undesirable.
Mary McCarthyFor self-realization, a rebel demands a strong authority, a worthy opponent, God to his Lucifer.
Mary McCarthyThe horror of Gandhi's murder lies not in the political motives behind it or in its consequences for Indian policy or for the future of non-violence; the horror lies simply in the fact that any man could look into the face of this extraordinary person and deliberately pull a trigger.
Mary McCarthyThe only form of action open to a child is to break something or strike someone, its mother or another child; it cannot cause things to happen in the world.
Mary McCarthyCombativeness was, I suppose, the dominant trait in my grandmother's nature. An aggressive churchgoer, she was quite without Christian feeling; the mercy of the Lord Jesus had never entered her heart. Her piety was an act of war against Protestant ascendancy. ...The teachings of the Church did not interest her, except as they were a rebuke to others.
Mary McCarthyI shall never send for a priest or recite an Act of Contrition in my last moments. I do not mind if I lose my soul for all eternity. If the kind of God exists Who would damn me for not working out a deal with Him, then that is unfortunate. I should not care to spend eternity in the company of such a person.
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 McCarthyFor both writer and reader, the novel is a lonely, physically inactive affair. Only the imagination races.
Mary McCarthyYet friendship, I believe, is essential to intellectuals. It is probably the growth hormone the mind requires as it begins its activity of producing and exchanging ideas. You can date the evolving life of a mind, like the age of a tree, by the rings of friendship formed by the expanding central trunk. In the course of my history, not love or marriage so much as friendship has promoted growth.
Mary McCarthyA good deal of education consists of unlearning-the breaking of bad habits as with a tennis serve.
Mary McCarthyThe fact is that gardening, more than most of our other activities except sometimes love-making, confronts us with the inexplicable.
Mary McCarthyA politician or political thinker who calls himself a political realist is usually boasting that he sees politics, so to speak, in the raw; he is generally a proclaimed cynic and pessimist who makes it his business to look behind words and fine speeches for the motive. This motive is always low.
Mary McCarthy