Richard

“Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’."
(on Lillian Hellman)”
― Mary McCarthy

“We are the hero of our own story.”
― Mary McCarthy

“You mustn’t force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex—that’s quite a thought, isn’t it?”
― Mary McCarthy, The Group:

“Luckily, I am writing a memoir and not a work of fiction, and therefore I do not have to account for my grandmother’s unpleasing character and look for the Oedipal fixation or the traumatic experience which would give her that clinical authenticity that is nowadays so desirable in portraiture.”
― Mary McCarthy, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood