Norman Mailer Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.”
-- Norman Mailer -
“Part of living, part of becoming a wise man or a wise woman, is to get to that point where you can have a friend for whom you are genuinely happy when he or she has a success. That's tough. Very few people get to that point. With writers it's next to impossible. You can't really bless a writer who's as good as yourself.”
-- Norman Mailer -
“Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.”
-- Norman MailerSource : "Mr. Mailer Concludes". Interview with Zachary Klein, zacharykleinonline.com. July 29, 2013.
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“People who live under fascism are not only miserable but they're full of shame. You just don't go in and inject democracy into them. They're half crazy with their own...”
-- Norman Mailer -
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“Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.”
-- Norman MailerSource : 1965 'Mr Mailer Interviews Himself', in the NewYork Times Book Review,17 Sep.
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“There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.”
-- Norman MailerSource : Norman Mailer, Michael Lennon (1988). “Conversations with Norman Mailer”, p.389, Univ. Press of Mississippi
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“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 -
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“The art of the novel is to arrive at that artless point where your characters become more real than yourself.”
-- Norman Mailer -
“The condition that is most disagreeable in your life becomes the most useful one. You know, I feel the same way about the U.S. Army. It was absolutely the worst experience of my life, and it was probably the single most valuable experience.”
-- Norman Mailer -
“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 -
“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.”
-- Norman Mailer -
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“Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day.”
-- Norman Mailer -
“While I'm working on a book, I rarely read anything more than The New York Times. Which may have the long-term effect of flattening my style.”
-- Norman Mailer -
“I've made an ***** of myself so many times I often wonder if I am one.”
-- Norman Mailer -
“Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union by increasing armaments.”
-- Norman Mailer -
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“To blame the poor for subsisting on welfare has no justice unless we are also willing to judge every rich member of society by how productive he or she is. Taken individual by individual, it is likely that there's more idleness and abuse of government favors among the economically privileged than among the ranks of the disadvantaged.”
-- Norman Mailer -
“We have an absolute right in a democracy to argue about a war.”
-- Norman Mailer -
“With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance.”
-- Norman MailerSource : Norman Mailer (2013). “The Deer Park: A Novel”, p.368, Random House
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“The nightmare in every democracy, the very nightmare, is if it gets worse and worse and worse, we could end up totalitarian.”
-- Norman Mailer -
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“The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.”
-- Norman Mailer -
“There are these two kinds of patriotism. There's blind patriotism, unflagging patriotism. And then there's the patriotism that says I live in a democracy and it's very important for the health and the life of this democracy that it get better all the time, not get worse.”
-- Norman Mailer -
“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 -
“The only faithfulness people have is to emotions they're trying to recapture”
-- Norman Mailer -
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“Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists.”
-- Norman MailerSource : Esquire, June 1960
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“Writer’s block is only a failure of the ego.”
-- Norman Mailer -
“The great power in America is the corporations - we`re a corporate country. We`re run by a CEO and the stockholders have very little to say on how the corporation is run. Fine, the board of directors run it and the stockholders can just be disgruntled, but who gives a damn?”
-- Norman Mailer -
“There is no greater impotence in all the world like knowing you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave crashes upon you.”
-- Norman MailerSource : "The Armies of the Night". Book by Norman Mailer, 1968.
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“I really gave up being passionate about politics 10, 15, 20 years ago, because I think finally that there were forces in the country that are larger than politics itself. And so I find it a fascinating game, this wonderful stuff goes on in terms of watching the game. But If you get to down it, look, I`m going to root for someone, I`ll root at a football game, not for politicians.”
-- Norman Mailer -
“One's condition on ***** is always existential. One can feel the importance of each moment and how it is changing one. One feels one's being, one becomes aware of the enormous apparatus of nothingness - the hum of a hi-fi set, the emptiness of a pointless interruption, one becomes aware of the war between each of us, how the nothingness in each of us seeks to attack the being of others, how our being in turn is attacked by the nothingness in others.”
-- Norman Mailer
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