Mary McCarthy Quote

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. It's absolutely useless to look for it, you won't find it, but it's possible in some sense to make it.


Interview by Elisabeth Niebuhr in "The Paris Review Interviews: Writers at Work, Second Series" (1963)


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...

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...

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...

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...