"We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story."
"In moments of despair, we look on ourselves lead-enly as objects; we see ourselves, our lives, as someone else might see them and may even be driven to kill ourselves if the separation, the "knowledge," seems sufficiently final."
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Source: Mary McCarthy (1961). “On the contrary”, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy
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"It has to be acknowledged that in capitalist society, with its herds of hippies, originality has become a sort of fringe benefit, a mere convention, accepted obsolescence, the Beatnik model being turned in for the Hippie model, as though strangely obedient to capitalist laws of marketing."
"The Crucifixion and other historical precedents notwithstanding, many of us still believe that outstanding goodness is a kind of armor, that virtue, seen plain and bare, gives pause to criminality. But perhaps it is the other way around."
"Modern neurosis began with the discoveries of Copernicus. Science made men feel small by showing him that the earth was not the center of the universe."
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