Not who you're looking for? Others named Mary McCarthy: American writer (1912–1989) · Irish writer · CIA operative · American screenwriter
“I 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. It's absolutely useless to look for it, you won’t find it, but it’s possible in some sense to make it.”
“It was Domna's frailty, as a young and egoistic person, to experience in a heightened way a common subjective illusion, which was that her own life was free, determined only by voluntary choices, while the lives of other people around her were subject to harsh necessity.”
“[T]he whole concept of transcendence […] was very close to my heart, the concept that man is more than his circumstances, more even than himself.”
“Her [Helena's] light, mildly aseptic irony was wasted on Norine, who was unaware of irony and humorous vocal shadings; she listened only to the overt content of what was said and drew her own blunt inferences.”
“They would not be happy unless she conformed to their definition of enjoyment, which meant that she would have to be miserable to satisfy them.”
“It was getting rather alarming. I realised one day that in twenty four hours I had slept with three different men. And one morning I was in bed with somebody while over his head I talked on the telephone with somebody else…I did not feel promiscuous. Maybe no-one does. And maybe more girls sleep with more men than you would ever think to look at them.”
Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.
