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
Great hope has no real footing unless one is willing to face into the doom that may also be on the way. p.207
America has an almost obscene infatuation with itself. Has there ever been a big, powerful country that is as patriotic as America? And patriotic in the tinniest way, with so much flag waving? You'd really think we were some poor little republic, and that if one person lost his religion for one hour, the whole thing would crumble. America is the real religion in this country.
I had the idea that there were two worlds. There was a real world as I called it, a world of wars and boxing clubs and children'shomes on back streets, and this real world was a world where orphans burned orphans.... I liked the other world in which almost everyone lived. The imaginary world.
The art of the novel is to arrive at that artless point where your characters become more real than yourself.
Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day.
Is there meat in these? I'm a vegetarian.
When considering regulations, half of what is published is probably 50 % incorrect. The rest is 75 % wrong.
Moving from one activity to another makes sense if you do it with a hint of wit or touch of grace. But I think moving from one activity to another can give momentum. If you do it well you can increase the energy you bring to the next piece of work.
The platitude turned on its head is still a platitude
Conservatives are people who look at a tree and feel instinctively that it is more beautiful than anything they can name. But when it comes to defending that tree against a highway, they will go for the highway.
You can indulge your righteous rage but the things it comes out of are pretty cheap. The trick is to make yourself an instrument of your own policy. Whether you like it or not, that's the highest effectiveness man has achieved.
I've had an exciting relation to France all my life, from my young years in Brooklyn when I thought that Paris was the place to be.
It is the actions of men and not their sentiments that make history. Our sentiments can be loaded with love within, but our actions can turn into the opposite. Perversity is always ready to consort with human nature.
To be a mainstream American is to live as an oxymoron. You are a good Christian, but you strain to remain dynamically competitive.