Norman Mailer Quotes

I think it's bad to talk about one's present work for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.

The private terror of the liberal spirit is invariably suicide not murder.

As many people die from an excess of timidity as from bravery.

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

Let the passions and cupidities and dreams and kinks and ideals and greed and hopes and foul corruptions of all men and women have their day and the world will still be better off, for there is more good than bad in the sum of us and our workings.

It is not uncommon for fighters’ camps to be gloomy. In heavy training, fighters live in dimensions of boredom others do not begin to contemplate. Fighters are supposed to. The boredom creates an impatience with one’s life, and a violence to improve it. Boredom creates a detestation for losing.

Prevarication, like honesty, is reflexive, and soon becomes a sturdy habit, as reliable as truth.

About a week after they had come back, a load of mail came to the island. They were the first letters the men had received in several weeks, and for a night it relieved the changeless pattern of their lives. One of the infrequent rations of beer was given out the same night, and the men finished their three cans quickly, and sat about without saying very much. The beer had been far too inadequate to make them drunk; it made them only moody and reflective, it opened the gate to all their memories, and left them sad, hungering for things they could not name.