Mary McCarthy

"To marry a man without loving him, which was what I had just done, not really perceiving it, was a wicked action, I saw. Stiff with remorse and terror, I lay under the thin blanket through a good part…"

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

"She did not approve of revolutions, unless they were absolutely necessary, and she thought it peculiar, to say the least, that her father and his friends were eager to make revolutions in democratic c…"

"The American, if he has a spark of national feeling, will be humiliated by the very prospect of a foreigner's visit to Congress — these, for the most part, illiterate hacks whose fancy vests are spott…"

"he whole concept of transcendence was very close to my heart, the concept that man is more than his circumstances, more even than himself."

"This refusal to listen was a form of stupidity that Martha especially abhorred, and she considered Miles well punished for it. If he had ever taken seriously her passionate desire to leave him, she mi…"

"Calling someone a monster does not make him more guilty; it makes him less so by classing him with beasts and devils . Such an unnatural being is more horrible to contemplate than an Eichmann — that i…"

"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."