A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped. Norman Mailer More Quotes by Norman Mailer More Quotes From Norman Mailer The world's not what I want it to be. But then no one ever said I had the right to design the world. Norman Mailer design want world I respect most boxers because they're violent people who learned to discipline themselves ... a good boxer is an artist ... Boxing is existential - some fights are better than others. Norman Mailer discipline fighting artist 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 courage-to-love rewards anxiety What's not realized about good novelists is that they're as competitive as good athletes. They study each other - where the other person is good and where the person is less good. Writers are like that but don't admit it. Norman Mailer competition novelists athlete One will feel the same subtle nausea coming into the city or waiting to depart from it that one feels now in such plastic catacombs as O'Hare's reception center in Chicago. Norman Mailer nausea cities waiting The women's movement is filled with tyrants, just as men's political movements are equally filled. Norman Mailer tyrants political men We live in a time which has created the art of the absurd. It is our art. It contains happenings, Pop art, camp, a theater of the absurd... Do we have the art because the absurd is the patina of waste...? Or are we face to face with a desperate or most rational effort from the deepest resources of the unconscious of us all to rescue civilization from the pit and plague of its bedding? Norman Mailer effort civilization art Since great writers communicate a vision of existence, one can't borrow their methods. The method is married to the vision. Norman Mailer married vision writing I hate everything which is not in myself. Norman Mailer ego hate literature Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most. Norman Mailer individual revolution literature In every death is a celebration; in every ecstasy, one little death. Norman Mailer celebration littles death I take it for granted that there's a side of me that loves public action, and there's another side of me that really wants to be alone and work and write. And I've learned to alternate the two as matters develop. Norman Mailer want writing two Left-wingers are incapable of conspiring because they are all egomaniacs. Norman Mailer egomaniacs liberalism incapable The sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less important, that the romantic spirit has dried up, that there is no shame today. We're all getting so mean and small and petty and ridiculous, and we all live under the threat of extermination. Norman Mailer important today mean The Barry Goldwater movement excited the depths because the apocalypse was brought more near, and like millions of other whites, I had been leading a life which was a trifle too pointless and a trifle too full of guilt and my gullet was close to nausea with the empty promises of an empty liberal center. Norman Mailer nausea guilt promise Like all men who are Napoleonic in their ambitionshe has instincts about the nature of growth, a lover's sense of the momentof crisis, and he knewhow costly is defeat when it is not soothed by greater consciousness, and how wasteful is the profit of victory when there is not the courage to employ it. Norman Mailer ambition courage men The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again; it has perhaps not been here so intensely in thirty years, not since the Nazis were prospering, but it is coming back. Norman Mailer night civilization years I do believe that America's deepest political sickness is that it is a self-righteous nation. Norman Mailer self believe america Great sex is apocalyptic. There is no such thing as great sex unless you have an apocalyptic moment. Norman Mailer great-sex moments sex You're gambling with something vital. Most writers get smashed egos. Norman Mailer gambling ego
