Quotes from book

The Group

“You mustn't force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex.”

Mary McCarthy book The Group

Dottie in Ch. 2
The Group (1963)

“It was June, 1933, one week after Commencement, when Kay Leiland Strong, Vassar '33, the first of her class to run around the table at the Class Day dinner, was married to Harald Petersen, Reed '27, in the chapel of St. George's Church, P. E., Karl F. Reiland, Rector.”

Mary McCarthy book The Group

Source: The Group (1963), Ch. 1, first lines of novel

“As Socrates showed, love cannot be anything else but the love of the good. But to find the good is very rare. That is why love is rare, in spite of what people think. It happens to one in a thousand, and to that one it is a revelation. No wonder he cannot communicate with the other nine hundred and ninety-nine.”

Mary McCarthy book The Group

Mr Schneider in Ch. 12
The Group (1963)

“Polly saw the point. Would she wish not to have been born? Unhappy as she was, she could not say that. Even when she had wished to die, she had not wished never to have been born. Nobody alive could do that.”

Mary McCarthy book The Group

Source: The Group (1963), Ch. 12

“She decided she wanted a cool, starchy independent life, with ruffles of humor like window curtains.”

Mary McCarthy book The Group

Polly in Ch. 11
The Group (1963)

“One of the big features of living alone was that you could talk to yourself all you wanted and address imaginary audiences, running the gamut of emotion.”

Mary McCarthy book The Group

Source: The Group (1963), Ch. 8