Norman Mailer Quotes

Patterned after an Italian Renaissance palace, it is 88 times as large and one millionth as valuable to the continuation of man. that Pentagon of traveling salesmen.

You do not really wish to hear more of the Battle of Kadesh. Let me say only that human fat, gorged in considerable quantity, has an intoxicating effect. I became ... drunk.

Since great writers communicate a vision of existence, one can't borrow their methods. The method is married to the vision.

What were the phenomena of the world today? If I knew little else, I knew the answer - war, and the preparations for new war.

...the indispensable requirement for a good newspaperman - as eager to tell a lie as the truth.

Comfortless was my religion, anxiety of the anxieties, for I believed God was not love, but courage. Love came only as a reward.

People who are greedy have extraordinary capacities for waste-they must, they take in too much.

If only gravity were working, the path would be symmetrical, it is the wind resistance that produces the tragic curve.

The novelist ... must live in paranoia and seek to be one with the world; he must be terrified of experience and hungry for it; he must think himself nothing and believe he is superior to all.

The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again; it has perhaps not been here so intensely in thirty years, not since the Nazis were prospering, but it is coming back.

MIke Lee writes with honesty, penetration, wit and the ability to surprise the reader with an unexpected turn from time to time that enriches the experience.

Goldstein, you'd be a pretty good boy if you wasn't so chicken.

A book of great beauty and manically exquisite insight with a wild and deadly humor . . . The only American novelist who may conceivably be possessed by genius.

I did like Robert Vavra's book not only for its so very good photographs but for the text as well. He's no ordinary fellow, obviously.

Even an evil man can have principles—he can be true to his own evil, which is not always so easy.

Great hope has no real footing unless one is willing to face into the doom that may also be on the way. p.207

The sole virtue of losing your short-term memory is that it does free you to be your own editor.

To make an Army work you have to have every man in it fitted into a fear ladder... The Army functions best when you're frightened of the man above you, and contemptuous of your subordinates.

I am convinced the most unfortunate people are those who would make an art of love. It sours other effort. Of all artists, they are certainly the most wretched.

Is one human? Or merely alive? Like a blade of grass equal to all existance in the moment it is torn? Yes. If pain is fundament, then a blade of grass can know all there is.

For what does it mean to be a hero? It requires you to be prepared to deal with forces larger than yourself.

Love was love, one could find it with anyone, one could find it anywhere. It was just that you could never keep it. Not unless you were ready to die for it.

I don't read other writers because I'm writing all the time. It's too disturbing to read a writer with a good style when you're in the middle of putting your work together.

God is a creator, not a law giver.

There's a tendency for Americans, particularly the simpler you are, the more you believe in the president as the kind of person to be.

Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union by increasing armaments.

I met Jack Kennedy in November, 1946. We were both war heroes, and both of us had just been elected to Congress.

I wonder, said the Lord I wonder if I know the answer any more.

Every time I move I squash something said Loathesome.

Let everywritertell hisownliesThat's freedomof thepress.

rip the prisonsopenput theconvictsontelevision

How his hatred seethed in search of a justifiable excuse.

There is something silly about a man who wears a white suit all the time, especially in New York." (on Tom Wolfe)

With the pride of the artist you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance.

The private terror of the liberal spirit is invariably suicide not murder.

I think it's bad to talk about one's present work for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.

With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance.

There are four stages in a marriage. First there's the affair, then the marriage, then children and finally the fourth stage, without which you cannot know a woman, the divorce.