We divorced ourselves from the materials of the earth, the rock, the wood, the iron ore; we looked to new materials which were cooked in vats, long complex derivatives of urine which we called plastic. They had no odor of the living, ... their touch was alien to nature. ... [They proliferated] like the matastases of cancer cells.

Norman Mailer

Categorized in : Life Nature Cancer

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

government taken judging

The mark of mediocrity is to look for precedent.

Norman Mailer

precedent mediocrity looks

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

Norman Mailer

eugenics levels suffering

There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.

Norman Mailer

literature law inspirational

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

Norman Mailer

writing men book

Love asks us that we be a little braver than is comfortable, a little more generous, a little more flexible. It means living on the edge more than we care to.

Norman Mailer

care littles mean

I've made an ass of myself so many times I often wonder if I am one.

Norman Mailer

ass made wonder

Harsh words live in the dungeon of the heart

Norman Mailer

harsh dungeons heart

I really am a pessimist. I've always felt that fascism is a more natural governmental condition than democracy. Democracy is a grace. It's something essentially splendid because it's not at all routine or automatic. Fascism goes back to our infancy and childhood, where we were always told how to live. We were told, Yes, you may do this; no, you may not do that. So the secret of fascism is that it has this appeal to people whose later lives are not satisfactory.

Norman Mailer

childhood grace people

We love those who can lead us to a place we will never reach without them.

Norman Mailer

cute-friendship cute

Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.

Norman Mailer

confused groups answers

We are close to dead. There are faces and bodies like gorged maggots on the dance floor, on the highway, in the city, in the stadium; they are a host of chemical machines who swallow the product of chemical factories, aspirin, preservatives, stimulant, relaxant, and breathe out their chemical wastes into a polluted air. The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again.

Norman Mailer

cities night civilization

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

eye stupid white

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

change love life

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 Mailer

wave knowing world

The paradox is that no love can prove so intense as the love of two narcissists for each other.

Norman Mailer

narcissist intense two

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.

Norman Mailer

real war children

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.

Norman Mailer

names beautiful people

With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance.

Norman Mailer

wall pride artist

A really good style comes only when a man has become as good as he can be. Style is character. A good style cannot come from a bad undisciplined character.

Norman Mailer

style character men