Mary McCarthyThinkers

America is the proof of the unfinished negative of Europe.

America is a country whose national belief is the happy ending.

Bureaucracy is the modern form of despotism.

Bureaucracy is, as the rule of no one, the modem form of despotism.

Congress is illiterate hacks whose fancy vests are spotted with gravy and whose speeches, hypocritical, unctuous and slovenly, are spotted also with the gravy of political patronage.

Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof.

Fashion is a natural fascination — every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted.

A Happy ending is our national belief.

Laughter is the great antidote for self-pity, maybe a specific for the malady.

Neurosis is the ailment of the petty bourgeois, for whom madness is too revolutionary... they cannot go whole hog.

The Novel's suspense is not only in the reader, but in the novelist, who is intensely curious about what will happen to the hero.

Realistic is a polite way of saying 'bad' — If someone tells you he is going to make a "realistic decision," you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad.