Norman Mailer quotes - page 2

Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war. (Norman Mailer)

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

Norman Mailer

Crude thoughts and fierce forces are my state. I do not know who I am. Nor what I was. I cannot hear a sound. Pain is near that will be like no pain felt before.

Norman Mailer

Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like putting a live grenade in the hands of a child.

Norman Mailer

The Irish are the only men who know how to cry for the dirty polluted blood of all the world.

Norman Mailer

Obsession is the single most wasteful human activity, because with an obsession you keep coming back and back and back to the same question and never get an answer.

Norman Mailer

The ultimate tendency of liberalism is vegetarianism.

Norman Mailer

The highest prize in a world of men is the most beautiful woman available on your arm and living there in her heart loyal to you.

Norman Mailer

I hate everything which is not in myself.

Norman Mailer

Hip is the sophistication of the wise primitive in a giant jungle.

Norman Mailer

Each day a few more lies eat into the seed with which we are born, little institutional lies from the print of newspapers, the shock waves of television, and the sentimental cheats of the movie screen. (Norman Mailer)

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.

Norman Mailer

When I read it, I don't wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write.

Norman Mailer

I'm hostile to men, I'm hostile to women, I'm hostile to cats, to poor cockroaches, I'm afraid of horses.

Norman Mailer

The desire for success lubricates secret prostitution's in the soul.

Norman Mailer

I had a quick grasp of the secret to sanity, it had become the ability to hold the maximum of impossible combinations in one's mind.

Norman Mailer

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

Norman Mailer

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.

Norman Mailer

The only faithfulness people have is to emotions they're trying to recapture.

Norman Mailer

Harsh words live in the dungeon of the heart.

Norman Mailer

There is a no man's land between sex and love, and it alters in the night. (Norman Mailer)

You don't know a woman until you've met her in court.

Norman Mailer

Great sex is apocalyptic. There is no such thing as great sex unless you have an apocalyptic moment.

Norman Mailer

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.

Norman Mailer

The essence of spirit, he thought to himself, was to choose the thing which did not better one's position but made it more perilous. That was why the world he knew was poor, for it insisted morality and caution were identical.

Norman Mailer

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Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer - Image

Occupation: American Novelist
Born: January 31, 1923
Died: November 10, 2007
Quotes count: 198
Wikipedia: Norman Mailer

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