Mary McCarthy

Quotes

1. You know what my favourite quotation is? […] It’s from Chaucer […] Criseyde says it, "I am myne owene woman, wel at ese."

   p. 70

2. 

   There was a side of Sloan, she [Priss] had decided, that she mistrusted, a side that could be summed up by saying that he was a Republican. Up to now this had not mattered; most men she knew were Republicans — it was almost part of being a man. But she did not like the thought of a Republican controlling the destiny of a helpless baby. In medicine, Sloan was quite forward-looking, but he was enamored of his own theories, which he wanted to enforce, like Prohibition, regardless of the human factor.

3. 

   One of the big features of living alone was that you could talk to yourself all you wanted and address imaginary audiences, running the gamut of emotion.

4. 

   It struck her that becoming a Trotskyite had merely given him one more thing to be snobbish about. He now looked down his nose at Stalinists, progressives, and New Dealers, as well as on the middle class and the 'moneyed elements,' whom he had always derided. Some of his worst prejudices, she told him, scolding, were being reinforced by his new adherence. For example, coming from Massachusetts, he had a plaintive aversion to the Irish, and he was elated to hear that Marx had called the Irish the bribed tools of imperialism. 'Look at that bribed tool of imperialism!' he would whisper, of the poor policeman on the beat.

5. 

   You mustn't force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex.

That’s all the quotes.

5 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more