Norman Mailer Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• Khomeini has offered us the opportunity to regain our frail religion ... faith in the power of words.

  Norman Mailer

  Opportunity, Power Of Words, Frail

  55 Copy quote

• When you know too much information and you acquire it too easily, you tend to either use it in disagreeable ways, out of vanity, or you tend to be indiscriminate about it. I mean, in the old days, it was tricky, you had to go to various encyclopedias, you had to go to the library, maybe spend a day there, whatever. But in the end, if you found something, it was really exciting. Now you hit a couple of buttons and you get some information. Which, by the way, is almost always presented in that same goddamn mediocre style that characterizes the Internet for me. It is slightly deadening.

  Norman Mailer

  Couple, Mean, Vanity

  5 Copy quote

• In every death is a celebration; in every ecstasy, one little death.

  Norman Mailer

  Death, Littles, Celebration

  Norman Mailer (2007). “Harlot's Ghost: A Novel”, p.107, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• The sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less important, that the romantic spirit has dried up, that there is no shame today. We're all getting so mean and small and petty and ridiculous, and we all live under the threat of extermination.

  Norman Mailer

  Mean, Important, Today

  Norman Mailer, Michael Lennon (1988). “Conversations with Norman Mailer”, p.34, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  7 Copy quote

• What's the use of being a writer if you can't irritate a great many people?

  Norman Mailer

  People, Use, Great Men

  4 Copy quote

• The art of the novel is to arrive at that artless point where your characters become more real than yourself.

  Norman Mailer

  Art, Real, Writing

  6 Copy quote

• We live in a time which has created the art of the absurd. It is our art. It contains happenings, Pop art, camp, a theater of the absurd... Do we have the art because the absurd is the patina of waste...? Or are we face to face with a desperate or most rational effort from the deepest resources of the unconscious of us all to rescue civilization from the pit and plague of its bedding?

  Norman Mailer

  Art, Civilization, Effort

  "Cannibals and Christians". Book by Norman Mailer, 1966.

  7 Copy quote

• At bottom, I mean profoundly at bottom, the FBI has nothing to do with Communism, it has nothing to do with catching criminals, it has nothing to do with the Mafia, the syndicate, it has nothing to do with trust-busting, it has nothing to do with interstate commerce, it has nothing to do with anything but serving as a church for the mediocre. A high church for the true mediocre.

  Norman Mailer

  Mean, Mafia, Church

  "The Presidential Papers (The Sixth Presidential Paper - A Kennedy Miscellany: An Impolite Interview)". Book by Norman Mailer, 1963.

  8 Copy quote

• Over-certified adjectives are the mark of most best-seller writing

  Norman Mailer

  Writing, Adjectives, Mark

  Norman Mailer (2013). “The Naked and the Dead: 50th Anniversary Edition, With a New Introduction by the Author”, p.12, Henry Holt and Company

  4 Copy quote

• One of the reasons the English got through all their falls and the loss of their empire, all their disasters, their strikes, their difficulties, their wars through the years was they had Shakespeare to fall back on. And they speak well in England.

  Norman Mailer

  War, Fall, Loss

  Source: www.foxnews.com

  7 Copy quote

• Madness is locked beneath. It goes into tissues, is swallowed by the cells. The cells go mad. Cancer is their flag. Cancer is thegrowth of madness denied.

  Norman Mailer

  Cancer, Cells, Mad

  Norman Mailer (2013). “An American Dream: A Novel”, p.254, Random House

  7 Copy quote

• I have always had this very strong, call it a feeling, call it a prejudice, call it a conviction ... that the mysteries are not easily available. You have to earn entrance into them. You didn't learn things for too little. You had to pay a price. And I felt that LSD was just blasting superhighways into the mysteries. And what I really didn't like about LSD is that people who were taking it were seeming to become less and less as they took it. They got emptier and more vapid.

  Norman Mailer

  Strong, People, Feelings

  8 Copy quote

• Every one of my books had killed me a little more.

  Norman Mailer

  Book, Littles

  5 Copy quote

• The difference between writing a book and being on television is the difference between conceiving a child and having a baby made in a test tube.

  Norman Mailer

  Baby, Children, Book

  1971 'The Siege of Mailer: Hero to Historian', in Village Voice, 21 Jan.

  7 Copy quote

• I respect most boxers because they're violent people who learned to discipline themselves ... a good boxer is an artist ... Boxing is existential - some fights are better than others.

  Norman Mailer

  Fighting, Artist, Discipline

  4 Copy quote

• What characterizes a member of a minority group is that he is forced to see himself as both exceptional and insignificant, marvelous and awful, good and evil.

  Norman Mailer

  Evil, Groups, Minorities

  1966 Cannibals and Christians, 'A Speech AtBerkeley on Vietnam Day'.

  10 Copy quote

• I always start a book for money. If you're married five times you have to.

  Norman Mailer

  Book, Writing, Married

  4 Copy quote

• Love is simple to understand if you haven't got a mind soft and full of holes. It's a crutch, that's all, and there isn't any one of us that doesn't need a crutch.

  Norman Mailer

  Love, Simple, Mind

  6 Copy quote

• Any workout which does not involve a certain minimum of danger or responsibility does not improve the body - it just wears it out.

  Norman Mailer

  Fitness, Workout, Health

  Norman Mailer, Michael Lennon (1988). “Conversations with Norman Mailer”, p.89, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  17 Copy quote

• Writer’s block is only a failure of the ego.

  Norman Mailer

  Block, Ego, Writer's Block

  11 Copy quote

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

  Norman Mailer

  Children, Divorce, Cynical

  News Summaries, December 31, 1969.

  20 Copy quote

• Did a sense of shame ever reside in our Republican toadies? You can't stop people who are never embarrassed by themselves. Will's readiness to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse can be cited as world class sycophancy.

  Norman Mailer

  Class, People, History

  "In the Ring" by Norman Mailer, www.newyorker.com. October 6, 2008.

  4 Copy quote

• We have an absolute right in a democracy to argue about a war.

  Norman Mailer

  War, Democracy, Arguing

  Source: www.foxnews.com

  4 Copy quote

• The war between being and nothingness is the underlying illness of the twentieth century. Boredom slays more of existence than war.

  Norman Mailer

  War, Blessing, Boredom

  Norman Mailer (2003). “The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing”, p.164, Random House

  9 Copy quote

• Writers don't have lifestyles. They just sit in little rooms and write.

  Norman Mailer

  Writing, Littles, Rooms

  4 Copy quote

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