Norman Mailer in his writings is ultimately more concerned with success than with danger; danger is only a means to success.

Sanity is a cozy lie.

A family's photograph album is generally about the extended family and, often, is all that remains of it.

The taste for quotations (and for the juxtaposition of incongruous quotations) is a Surrealist taste.

A fiction about soft or easy deaths is part of the mythology of most diseases that are not considered shameful or demeaning.

What is the most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.

I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list.

In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.

Surrealism in painting amounted to little more than the contents of a meagerly stocked dream world: a few witty fantasies, mostly wet dreams and agoraphobic nightmares.

It is easier to endure than to change. But once one has changed, what was endured is hard to recall.

A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly scientific way of affirming the primacy of "spirit" over matter.

Motivation is Power, Power is Motivation

Vocabulary for aggravation is large. Vocabulary for transcendence is elusive.

From a boy I gloated on existence. Earth to me Seemed all-sufficient and my sojourn there One trembling opportunity for joy.

To be successful, you need to really work hard. And every study in the last 50 years says that successful people say, "I am not smarter than anybody else. I just want to work harder and longer."

Books had shown me, however, that all people everywhere wanted their lives to have purpose and meaning. This longing was universal.

Without purity it's impossible to realize God.

We need to understand what we're saying matters.

Intensity makes you stronger. Emotionalism makes you weaker.

Ultimately, an aircraft owner does not want to have to deal with all the intricate details which are necessary for the business.

There must be 50 ways to leave your lover.