Mary McCarthy
Mary McCarthy
Mary Therese McCarthywas an American novelist, critic and political activist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth21 June 1912
CitySeattle, WA
CountryUnited States of America
real guarantees-that venice
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.
cities venice doubt
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.
venice tourists
...the tourist Venice is Venice.
cities venice water
Venice, as a city, was a foundling, floating upon the waters like Moses in his basket among the bulrushes.
real venice world
The things of this world reveal their essential absurdity when they are put in the Venetian context. In the unreal realm of the canals, as in a Swiftian Lilliput, the real world, with its contrivances, appears as a vast folly.
apartments argument assault basic bear character conditions crowded endure fact finds food foreigner lack large life material nation negative perpetual point senses strongest tolerate
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.
america american-author unfinished
Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof.
force love work
You musn't force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex.
imagination plums putting
I am putting real plums into an imaginary cake.
american-author form modern rule
Bureacracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.
consider facility intelligence intelligence-and-intellectuals seriously
We will need much better intelligence on this facility before we seriously consider any options.
appearance cultivation old-money
Old money is fully as moronic as new money but it has inherited an appearance of cultivation.
easter prayer latin
... it was religion that saved me. Our ugly church and parochial school provided me with my only aesthetic outlet, in the words ofthe Mass and the litanies and the old Latin hymns, in the Easter lilies around the altar, rosaries, ornamented prayer books, votive lamps, holy cards stamped in gold and decorated with flower wreaths and a saint's picture.
hide looking pile
They're looking for a place to hide because they're so cold. It could be a pile of anything.