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I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you’re older, I think, is that — how to express this — you really must make the self.

— Mary McCarthy

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Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: Interview by Elisabeth Niebuhr in "The Paris Review Interviews: Writers at Work, Second Series" (1963) [the interview took place in March 1961]
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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We are a nation of twenty million bathrooms, with a humanist in every tub.

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

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

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

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

Comment about Lillian Hellman in a televised interview (1979)

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

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You never learn a language unless you use it.

Cannibals and Missionaries (1979)

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.

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

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

Birds of America (1971)

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More quotes by Mary McCarthy

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.

The Group (1963)

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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.