Marya Mannes
Marya Mannes
Marya Manneswas an American author and critic, known for her caustic but insightful observations of American life. Mannes also wrote under the pen name of, "Sec."...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth14 November 1904
CountryUnited States of America
passion long dying
In our long and obsessive passion for youth, we have - more than any other modern society - avoided direct approach to age and to dying by denying them in word, in fact, and - above all - in worth.
war artist vision
Artists never make wars. They are too busy making life out of the matter of their visions.
grace infinite great-music
Surely the hold of great music on the listener is precisely this: that the listener is made whole; and at the same time part of an image of infinite grace and grandeur which is creation.
sobriety musical passionate
A musical audience is at best uninspiring, at worst definitely drab. ... Respectability hangs like a pall over the orchestra and the boxes; a sort of sterile sobriety ill-fitted to the passionate geometry of music.
ocean fighting self
[The sea] is the healer and the reviver, it cleanses the cavities of self-disgust and melancholy, of sloth and negation with the salt solution of life. It cures the lethargies of flesh and spirit with the slap and shake of elemental force. It cradles and comforts. Give it trust and it holds you secure; fight it and it kills.
solitude important detachment
There is nothing harder to come by than detachment and solitude; and nothing more important.
likes vices caught
Everybody likes to see somebody else get caught for the vices practiced by themselves.
men yoke cherish
When women can cherish the vulnerability of men as much as men can exult in the strength of women, a new breed could lift a ruinous yoke from both.
mind age desire
Minds are cluttered from the age of six with the values of others-values which bear little relation to their own private capacities, needs and desires.
party thinking people
certain kinds of people become Republicans and certain kinds of people become Democrats, and ... it's more than a matter of party affiliation. It's a way of thinking and being.
sex war compassion
All wars derive from lack of empathy: the incapacity of one to understand and accept the likeness or difference of another. Whether in nations or the encounters of race and sex, competition then replaces compassion, subjection excludes mutuality.
art thinking government
the overwhelming majority of people who are engaged in the processes of thought and expression are Democrats because the essence of thought is exploration and diversity and change. It's impossible to have vision in art or government without risk, or the boldness and courage which produce risk. And this - in spite of what they call modern Republicanism - is the antithesis of true Republican thinking.
new-york men voice
All people talk of money sometimes, everywhere. But not for all people, everywhere, is money the addiction, the obsession, the stimulant, that it seems to be in New York. It is a large part of the clamor, and it is the voice - quite literally - of the man in the street.
new-york voice diversity
The New York voice reflects its diversity, its foreignness, and, inevitably, the sense of superiority New Yorkers feel or come to feel. It says, without saying, We Know.