All Norman Mailer Quotes
The horror of the Twentieth Century was the size of each new event, and the paucity of its reverberation.
Norman Mailer
62% of people like this quote
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.
Norman Mailer
59% of people like this quote
In America all too few blows are struck into flesh. We kill the spirit here, we are experts at that. We use psychic bullets and kill each other cell by cell.
Norman Mailer
59% of people like this quote
We can never know for certain where our prayers are likely to go, nor from whom the answers will come. Just when we think we are at our nearest to God, we could be assisting the Devil.
Norman Mailer
59% of people like this quote
Masculinity is not something given to you, but something you gain. And you gain it by winning small battles with honor.
Norman Mailer
58% of people like this quote
What characterizes a member of a minority group is that he is forced to see himself as both exceptional and insignificant, marvelous and awful, good and evil.
Norman Mailer
57% of people like this quote
Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists.
Norman Mailer
57% of people like this quote
There's a subterranean impetus towards pornography so powerful that half the business world is juiced by the sort of half sex that one finds in advertisements.
Norman Mailer
57% of people like this quote
The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.
Norman Mailer
56% of people like this quote
In America few people will trust you unless you are irreverent.
Norman Mailer
56% of people like this quote
Hip is the sophistication of the wise primitive in a giant jungle.
Norman Mailer
56% of people like this quote
Obsession is the single most wasteful human activity, because with an obsession you keep coming back and back and back to the same question and never get an answer.
Norman Mailer
55% of people like this quote
Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.
Norman Mailer
55% of people like this quote
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.
Norman Mailer
55% of people like this quote
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