The mark of mediocrity is to look for precedent. Norman Mailer More Quotes by Norman Mailer More Quotes From Norman Mailer ...never have I subscribed to the doctrine of willful rejection of the world or its visual image. To the non-objectivist this act of impiety may be shockingly impure, but God, I have no desire to be either hollow or sterile. Norman Mailer doctrine rejection desire Every time a story about me appears in a newspaper, I am injured professionally. Norman Mailer injured newspapers stories Somerset Maugham ... wrote somewhere that "Nobody is any better than he ought to be."... I carried it along with me as a working philosophy, but I suppose that finally I would have to take exception to the thought ... or else the universe is just an elaborate clock. Norman Mailer clock exception philosophy If you can change style, why stick to one style? Style is a vanity because it gives you product identification. Norman Mailer vanity style giving There are two kinds of brave men: those who are brave by the grace of nature, and those who are brave by an act of will. Norman Mailer brave men two The essence of spirit ... was to choose the thing which did not better one's position but made it more perilous. That was why the world he knew was poor, for it insisted morality and caution were identical. Norman Mailer essence spirit world I become an actor, a quick-change artist, as if I can trap the Prince of Truth in the act of switching a style. Norman Mailer style actors artist The fact that we've been a great democracy doesn't mean we will automatically keep being one if we keep waving the flag. Norman Mailer flags democracy mean Writing for a newspaper is like running a revolutionary war. You go to battle not when you are ready, but when action offers itself. Norman Mailer writing running war And so I ask, "Would You agree that sex is where philosophy begins?" But God, who is the oldest of the philosophers, answers in his weary cryptic way, "Rather think of Sex as Time, and Time as the connection of new circuits. Norman Mailer god time sex I've always felt that my relationship to the United States is analogous to a marriage. I love this country. I hate it. I get angry at it. I feel close to it. I'm charmed by it. I'm repelled by it. And it's a marriage that's gone on for let's say at least 50 years of my writing life, and in the course of that, what's happened? It's gotten worse. It's not what it used to be. Norman Mailer hate writing country The White Protestant's ultimate sympathy must be with science, factology, and committee rather than with sex, birth, heat, flesh, creation, the sweet and the funky; they must vote, manipulate, control, and direct, these Protestants who are the center of power in our land, they must go for what they believe is reason when it is only the Square logic of the past. Norman Mailer sweet believe sex The century would seek to dominate nature as it had never been dominated, would attack the idea of war, poverty and natural catastrophe as never before. The century would create death, devastation and pollution as never before. Yet the century was now attached to the idea that man must take his conception of life out to the stars. Norman Mailer stars men war A book of great beauty and manically exquisite insight with a wild and deadly humor . . . The only American novelist who may conceivably be possessed by genius. Norman Mailer novelists genius book Three miles long and two streets wide, the town curls around the bay ... a gaudy run with Mediterranean splashes of color, crowded steep-pitched roofs, fishing piers and fishing boats whose stench of mackerel and gasoline is as aphrodisiac to the sensuous nose as the clean bar-whisky smell of a nightclub where call girls congregate. Norman Mailer girl fishing running I was now at a university in New York, a professor of existential psychology with the not inconsiderable thesis that magic, dread, and the perception of death were the roots of motivation. Norman Mailer motivation new-york roots I met Jack Kennedy in November, 1946... We went out on a double date and it turned out to be a fair evening for me. I seduced a girl who would have been bored by a diamond as big as the Ritz. Norman Mailer evening bored girl When the wind carries a cry which is meaningful to human ears, it is simpler to believe the wind shares with us some part of the emotion of Being than that the mysteries of a hurricane's rising murmur reduce to no more than the random collision of insensate molecules. Norman Mailer wind meaningful believe To make an Army work you have to have every man in it fitted into a fear ladder... The Army functions best when you're frightened of the man above you, and contemptuous of your subordinates. Norman Mailer ladders army men On a late-winter evening in 1983, while driving through fog along the Maine coast, recollections of old campfires began to drift into the March mist, and I thought of the Abnaki Indians of the Algonquin tribe who dwelt near Bangor a thousand years ago. Norman Mailer fog winter years
