Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer
Norman Kingsley Mailerwas an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film-maker, actor, and political activist. His novel The Naked and the Dead was published in 1948. His best-known work was widely considered to be The Executioner's Song, which was published in 1979, and for which he won one of his two Pulitzer Prizes. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, his book Armies of the Night was awarded the National Book Award...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth31 January 1923
CityLong Branch, NJ
CountryUnited States of America
In America few people will trust you unless you are irreverent.
If only gravity were working, the path would be symmetrical, it is the wind resistance that produces the tragic curve.
Culture's worth huge, huge risks. Without culture we're all totalitarian beasts.
The Irish are the only men who know how to cry for the dirty polluted blood of all the world.
The true religion of America has always been America.
The art of the novel is to arrive at that artless point where your characters become more real than yourself.
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.
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.
Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like putting a live grenade in the hands of a child.
The war between being and nothingness is the underlying illness of the twentieth century. Boredom slays more of existence than war.
I am not here only so that the blind might see, but to teach those who thought they could see that they are blind
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.
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.
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.