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Mary McCarthy Quotes about Literature

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The relation between life and literature - a final antimony - is one of mutual plagiarism.

The relation between life and literature - a final antimony - is one of mutual plagiarism.

Mary McCarthy
Finals, Literature, Plagiarism

Being abroad makes you conscious of the whole imitative side of human behavior. The ape in man.

Mary McCarthy
Men, Literature, Apes
Mary McCarthy (2017). “Mary McCarthy: Novels 1963-1979”, p.414, Library of America

When an American heiress wants to buy a man, she at once crosses the Atlantic. The only really materialistic people I have ever met have been Europeans.

Mary McCarthy
Men, People, Literature
On the Contrary (1961) "America the Beautiful"

Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.

Mary McCarthy
Freedom, Liberty, Literature
Mary McCarthy (1961). “On the contrary”, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy

In science, all facts, no matter how trivial or banal, enjoy democratic equality.

Mary McCarthy
Science, Equality, Literature
Mary McCarthy (1964). “The humanist in the bathtub”

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.

Mary McCarthy
Thinking, Self, Literature
Interview with Elisabeth Niebuhr (March 1961) in "Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Second Series", 1963.

I'm afraid I'm not sufficiently inhibited about the things that other women are inhibited about for me. They feel that you've given away trade secrets.

Mary McCarthy
Secret, Literature, Given
Look Magazine, February 26, 1964.

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