List of Mary McCarthy Quotes

The Breakdown Of Our Language, Evident In The Misuse, I.e., The Misunderstanding Of Nouns And Adjectives, Is Most Grave, Though Perhaps Not So Conspicuous, In The Handling Of Prepositions, Those Modest Little Connectives That Hold The Parts Of A Phrase Or A Sentence Together. They Are The Joints Of Any Language, What Make It, Literally, Articulate.

In Verity We Are The Poor. This Humanity We Would Claim For Ourselves Is The Legacy, Not Only Of The Enlightenment, But Of The Thousands And Thousands Of European Peasants And Poor Townspeople Who Came Here Bringing Their Humanity And Their Sufferings With Them. It Is The Absence Of A Stable Upper Class That Is Responsible For Much Of The Vulgarity Of The American Scene. Should We Blush Before The Visitor For This Deficiency?

The Fact Is That Gardening, More Than Most Of Our Other Activities Except Sometimes Love-making, Confronts Us With The Inexplicable.

The Theater Is The Only Branch Of Art Much Cared For By People Of Wealth; Like Canasta, It Does Away With The Brother Of Talk After Dinner.

The 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.

This Is The Spirit Of The Enchantment Under Which Venice Lies, Pearly And Roseate, Like The Sleeping Beauty, Changeless Throughout The Centuries, Arrested, While The Concrete Forest Of The Modern World Grows Up Around Her.

As 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.

The Strongest Argument For The Un-materialistic Character Of American Life Is That We Tolerate Conditions That Are, From A Materialistic Point Of View, Intolerable.

Who 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.

We Are A Nation Of 20 Million Bathrooms, With A Humanist In Every Tub.

...the Tourist Venice Is Venice.

... In America ... Children Are Instructed In The Virtues Of The System They Live Under, As Though History Had Achieved A Happy Ending In American Civics.