A Quote by Mary McCarthy

A novelist is an elephant, but an elephant who must pretend to forget.

Mary McCarthy

Quote Topics

Elephant Forget Must Novelist Pretend

Quote Author

Mary McCarthy
American - Novelist
June 21, 1912 - October 25, 1989

For example, after developing a sound similar to an elephant trumpeting, I wrote the song Elephant Talk which gave my elephant sound an appropriate place to live.

Adrian Belew

But as the work proceeded I was continually reminded of the fable about the elephant and the tortoise. Having constructed an elephant upon which the mathematical world could rest, I found the elephant tottering, and proceeded to construct a tortoise to keep the elephant from falling. But the tortoise was not more secure than the elephant, and after some twenty years of very arduous toil, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing more that I could do in the way of making mathematical knowledge indubitable.

Bertrand Russell

You know...they say an elephant never forgets. What they don't tell you is, you never forget an elephant.

Bill Murray

This is what metaphor is. It is not saying that an ant is an elephant. Perhaps; both are alive. No. Metaphor is saying the ant is an elephant. Now, logically speaking, I know there is a difference. If you put elephants and ants before me, I believe that every time I will correctly identify the elephant and the ant. So metaphor must come from a very different place than that of the logical, intelligent mind. It comes from a place that is very courageous, willing to step out of our preconceived ways of seeing things and open so large that it can see the oneness in an ant and in an elephant.

Natalie Goldberg

The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant. The rider is our conscious reasoning-the stream of words and images of which we are fully aware. The elephant is the other 99 percent of mental processes-the ones that occur outside of awareness but that actually govern most of our behavior.

Jonathan Haidt

I have a memory like an elephant. I remember every elephant I've ever met.

Herb Caen

Q: What's the difference between a tweaker and an elephant? A: The elephant will eat all your peanut butter.

Bucky Sinister

Make no friendship with an elephant keeper If you have no room to entertain an elephant

Saadi

China is referred to as the 'dragon' and India as an 'elephant'. But we are not an elephant, we are a 'beehive'.

Rahul Gandhi

A fool-proof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block of marble; then you chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant.

George Bernard Shaw

I know my Republican friends were glad to see my wife feeding an elephant in India. She gave him sugar and nuts. But of course the elephant wasn't satisfied.

John F. Kennedy

They say an elephant never forgets. Well, you are not an elephant. Take notes, constantly. Save interesting thoughts, quotations, films, technologies... the medium doesn't matter, so long as it inspires you.

Aaron Koblin

The Buddhists have a story about blind men trying to describe an elephant by feeling it's various parts, and each describes the elephant according to the part he touched. That is the way we can hope to know God.

Kent Nerburn

Ella is nervous,” the harpy muttered from her perch on the railing. “The elephant. The elephant is watching Ella.

Rick Riordan

An elephant always puts his foot into the hole which another elephant's foot has made so that a frequented track is nothing but a series of pits filled with mud and water.