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Loyalty to a side, he said, had been instilled in him by his southern mother, but he now thought you had to be loyal to all sides, to the truth as you saw it, which, when you came down to it, meant being loyal to yourself.

— Mary McCarthy

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Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: Warren in Ch. 2, pp. 535–536
Source quality: Source identified Names the work or year, but without an exact location.

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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.

How I Grew (1987)

I combine concrete cynicism with a sort of vague optimism.

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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.