Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension. "
Norman Mailer
Present
Think
Act
Related Quotes:
" Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men. "
Norman Mailer
Honor
American
Life
" 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
Day
Seed
Television
" Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like putting a live grenade in the hands of a child. "
Norman Mailer
Hands
Like
Live
" I don't think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for. "
Norman Mailer
Huge
Here
Absurd
" America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind. "
Norman Mailer
Live
America
Wind
" In America few people will trust you unless you are irreverent. "
Norman Mailer
Trust
Will
You
" In America all too few blows are struck into flesh. We kill the spirit here, we are experts at that. We use psychic bullets and kill each other cell by cell. "
Norman Mailer
America
Bullets
Here
" 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. "
Norman Mailer
Enough
Smart
Lawyer
" Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists. "
Norman Mailer
Forever
Newspaper
Lost
" 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
Question
Obsession
You
" The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level. "
Norman Mailer
Higher
Suffering
Socialism
" The Irish are the only men who know how to cry for the dirty polluted blood of all the world. "
Norman Mailer
Men
World
Know
" It's not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions. "
Norman Mailer
Make
Men
Which
" 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
Beautiful Woman
Heart
Woman
" Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit. "
Norman Mailer
Always
Dying
Growing
" 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
Group
Evil
See
" Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing. "
Norman Mailer
Closest
Books
Men
" 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
Devil
Creation
Will
" 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
Book
Baby
Test
" Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most. "
Norman Mailer
Most
History
Count
" 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
Horses
Poor
Afraid
" I hate everything which is not in myself. "
Norman Mailer
Which
Everything
Myself
" Growth, in some curious way, I suspect, depends on being always in motion just a little bit, one way or another. "
Norman Mailer
Always
Motion
Growth
" There are four stages in a marriage. First there's the affair, then the marriage, then children and finally the fourth stage, without which you cannot know a woman, the divorce. "
Norman Mailer
Marriage
Woman
Children
" The horror of the Twentieth Century was the size of each new event, and the paucity of its reverberation. "
Norman Mailer
Each
Size
Century
" Culture's worth huge, huge risks. Without culture we're all totalitarian beasts. "
Norman Mailer
Worth
Beasts
Without
" We can never know for certain where our prayers are likely to go, nor from whom the answers will come. Just when we think we are at our nearest to God, we could be assisting the Devil. "
Norman Mailer
Think
God
Know
" Masculinity is not something given to you, but something you gain. And you gain it by winning small battles with honor. "
Norman Mailer
Masculinity
Small
Winning
" When I read it, I don't wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write. "
Norman Mailer
Write
Which
Read
" 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
Ability
Become
Quick