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

— Mary McCarthy The Company She Keeps (1942)

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Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: Ch. 3 "The Man in the Brooks Brothers Shirt", p. 70.
Work: The Company She Keeps, 1942
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

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

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We are a nation of twenty million bathrooms, with a humanist in every tub.

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Life for the European is a career; for the American, it is a hazard.

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Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the.

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Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted.

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You never learn a language unless you use it.

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As subjects, we all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story.

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If you want to be your own master, his father used to say, always be surprised by evil; never anticipate it.

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Notes from Wikiquote

First published in Partisan Review (July-August 1941)

Topics

Women

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I am putting real plums into an imaginary cake.

People with bad consciences always fear the judgment of children.

On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

Nobody in this land, certainly no Christian, can accept hating on a full-time basis; it is apt to reflect back on the hater.

How I Grew (1987)

I combine concrete cynicism with a sort of vague optimism.

She decided she wanted a cool, starchy independent life, with ruffles of humor like window curtains.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Mary McCarthy (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.