Quote

Hip is the sophistication of the wise primitive in a giant jungle.

Norman Mailer

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Hips
Wise
Literature
Sophistication
Jungle
Giant
Primitive
Giants

More quotes by Norman Mailer

Image
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
Image
Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic.
Norman Mailer
Image
I never saw love as luck, as that gift from the gods which put everything else in place, and allowed you to succeed. No, I saw love as reward. One could find it only after one's virtue, or one's courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity, or loss, has succeeded in stirring the power of creation.
Norman Mailer
Image
For what does it mean to be a hero? It requires you to be prepared to deal with forces larger than yourself.
Norman Mailer
Image
What is there about polarity that is matter becoming more complex?
Norman Mailer
Image
The war between being and nothingness is the underlying illness of the twentieth century. Boredom slays more of existence than war.
Norman Mailer
Image
The greater the power of any subjective state, the more total is a Romantic's assumption that everyone understands exactly what he is about to do, therefore waste not a moment by stopping to tell them.
Norman Mailer
Image
Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like putting a live grenade in the hands of a child.
Norman Mailer
Image
I hate everything which is not in myself.
Norman Mailer
Image
When I read it [Tough Guys Don't Dance], I don't wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write.
Norman Mailer
Image
Love was love, one could find it with anyone, one could find it anywhere. It was just that you could never keep it. Not unless you were ready to die for it.
Norman Mailer
Image
I am not here only so that the blind might see, but to teach those who thought they could see that they are blind
Norman Mailer
Image
Writer’s block is only a failure of the ego.
Norman Mailer
Image
I had a quick grasp of the secret to sanity, it had become the ability to hold the maximum of impossible combinations in one's mind.
Norman Mailer
Image
Boredom slays more of existence than war.
Norman Mailer
Image
Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union by increasing armaments.
Norman Mailer
Image
...the indispensable requirement for a good newspaperman - as eager to tell a lie as the truth.
Norman Mailer
Image
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
Image
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
Image
When the time comes, they won't ask what kind of a Jew you are.
Norman Mailer