"We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story."
"it came to me, as we sat there, glumly ordering lunch, that for extremely stupid people anti-Semitism was a form of intellectuality, the sole form of intellectuality of which they were capable. It represented, in a rudimentary way, the ability to make categories, to generalize."
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Source: Mary McCarthy (1961). “On the contrary”, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy
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"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."
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