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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

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Norman Mailer
Age: 84 †
Born: 1923
Born: January 31
Died: 2007
Died: November 10
Actor
Biographer
Essayist
Film Director
Film Editor
Film Producer
Historian
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Stage Actor
Long Branch
New Jersey
Norman Kingsley Mailer
Andreas Wilson
Purpose
Think
Thinking
Immensity
Life
Shrink
Shrinks
Absurd
Inspiring
Huge

More quotes by Norman Mailer

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Simple narcissism gives the power of beasts to politicians, professional wrestlers and female movie stars.
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Nearly everything in the scheme of things works to dull a first-rate talent. But the worst probably is cowardice.
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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.
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Comfortless was my religion, anxiety of the anxieties, for I believed God was not love, but courage. Love came only as a reward.
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There's nothing glorious about being a professional. . . . Professionalism probably comes down to being able to work on a bad day.
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Alimony is the curse of the writing class.
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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.
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I was thinking that surgeons had to be the happiest people on earth. To cut people up and get paid for it-that's happiness, I told myself.
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I've made an ass of myself so many times I often wonder if I am one.
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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.
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MIke Lee writes with honesty, penetration, wit and the ability to surprise the reader with an unexpected turn from time to time that enriches the experience.
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People who are greedy have extraordinary capacities for waste-they must, they take in too much.
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I don't trust a man who uses the word evil eighteen times in ten minutes. If you're half evil, nothing soothes you more than to think the person you are opposed to is totally evil.
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...the indispensable requirement for a good newspaperman - as eager to tell a lie as the truth.
Norman Mailer
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Is one human? Or merely alive? Like a blade of grass equal to all existance in the moment it is torn? Yes. If pain is fundament, then a blade of grass can know all there is.
Norman Mailer
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While I'm working on a book, I rarely read anything more than The New York Times. Which may have the long-term effect of flattening my style.
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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
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Boredom slays more of existence than war.
Norman Mailer
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Somewhere, something incredible happened in history - the wrong guys won.
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We think of Marilyn who was every man's love affair with America. Marilyn Monroe who was blonde and beautiful and had a sweet little rinky-dink of a voice and all the cleanliness of all the clean American backyards.
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