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All I knew that night was that I believed in something and couldn't express it, while your team believed in nothing but knew how to say it — in other men's words. Of course I envied you that too.

— Mary McCarthy The Group (1963)

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Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: Norine to Helena in Ch. 6
Work: The Group, 1963
Source quality: Source identified Names the work or year, but without an exact location.

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

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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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I am putting real plums into an imaginary cake.

People with bad consciences always fear the judgment of children.

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

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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.