Home > Author > Norman Mailer
1 " Writer’s block is only a failure of the ego. "
― Norman Mailer
2 " Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war. "
3 " The only faithfulness people have is to emotions they're trying to recapture "
4 " Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. The more a man can achieve, the more he may be certain that the devil will inhabit a part of his creation. "
5 " Great hope has no real footing unless one is willing to face into the doom that may also be on the way.p.207 "
― Norman Mailer , The Big Empty: Dialogues on Politics, Sex, God, Boxing, Morality, Myth, Poker & Bad Conscience in America
6 " The writer can grow as a person or he can shrink. ... His curiosity, his reaction to life must not diminish. The fatal thing is to shrink, to be interested in less, sympathetic to less, desiccating to the point where life itself loses its flavor, and one’s passion for human understanding changes to weariness and distaste. "
7 " If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist. "
8 " Yank! Yank! We you come to get Yank. We you come to get. "
― Norman Mailer , The Naked and the Dead
9 " No, but why is Croft that way? Oh there are The Answers. He is that way because of the-corruption-of-the-society. He is that way because he is having problems of adjustment. It is because he is a Texan. It is because he has renounced God. He is that way because he was born that way, or because the Devil has claimed him for one of his own, or because the only woman he ever loved was untrue to him. "
10 " You don't know a woman until you've met her in court. "
11 " I won't stay inwith married menany moresaid the wise girlthey're too agreeable,it's a little too muchlike curlingupwith the good book.You meanagood bookOh, dear,did I saythegood booksighed the witch. "
― Norman Mailer , Deaths For The Ladies (and other disasters)
12 " Faction is that hybrid of documented fact and novelistic elaboration. "
13 " I met Jack Kennedy in November, 1946. We were both war heroes, and both of us had just been elected to Congress. "
14 " I don’t trust compliments. I’ve been getting them for years. Sometimes I deserve them, sometimes I didn’t. But generally when people give you compliments there’s one of two things wrong with them. Either they’re false, or what’s worse is they’re sincere. They really mean the compliment. And then they’re offering you their loyalty. And I’m kind of a stingy… Well, I don’t necessarily want to give all that loyalty back. So either way, let’s skip the compliments. "
15 " I wonder, said the Lord I wonder if I know the answer any more. "
16 " I tell you, say the rich,the poor are naughtbut dirty windwelling in air-shaftsover the cindersand droppings ofthe past, theirvoices thickwith greaseand ordure,sewer-greedto corrode the earwith the horrorsof the pastand the voidsof new stupidity.One could drownwaiting for the poorto makeone fine distinction.Yes, destroy ussay the richand you losethe rootsof God. "
17 " Every time I move I squash something said Loathesome. "
18 " Everything happens for a reason. "
― Norman Mailer , Marilyn
19 " Let everywritertell hisownliesThat's freedomof thepress. "
20 " Poems should be like pins which prick the skin of boredom and leave a glow equal in its pride to the gate of the sadist who stuck the pin and walked away "
