Quote

Part of the oncoming demise (of New York during its terrible fiscal crisis) is that none of us can simply believe it. We were always the best and the strongest of cities, and our people were vital to the teeth. Knock them down eight times and they would get up with that look in the eye which suggests the fight has barely begun.

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
Believe
Simply
Teeth
Fiscal
Always
Fighting
Eight
Demise
Would
Eye
Crisis
Suggests
People
Times
None
Barely
Part
York
Knock
Best
Terrible
Begun
Look
Fight
Vital
Looks
Cities
Strongest
Oncoming

More quotes by Norman Mailer

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I am not here only so that the blind might see, but to teach those who thought they could see that they are blind
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We're all divided souls, we've got two natures in us, You measure schizophrenia not by the fact that you're divided but how well the divisions speak to one another.
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A nation fights well in proportion to the amount of men and materials it has. And the other equation is that the individual soldier in that army is a more effective soldier the poorer his standard of living has been in the past.
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Chicago is the great American city, New York is one of the capitals of the world, and Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic San Francisco is a lady
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Tough guys don't dance. You had better believe it.
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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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One of the reasons the English got through all their falls and the loss of their empire, all their disasters, their strikes, their difficulties, their wars through the years was they had Shakespeare to fall back on. And they speak well in England.
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Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union by increasing armaments.
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Cancer is the growth of madness denied.
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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.
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The world's not what I want it to be. But then no one ever said I had the right to design the world.
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For what does it mean to be a hero? It requires you to be prepared to deal with forces larger than yourself.
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Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men.
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I usually need a can of beer to prime me.
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People move forward into the future out of the way they comprehend the past. When we don't understand something in our past, we are therefore crippled.
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It all comes down to who does the dishes.
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You have the right to speak your mind.
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Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like putting a live grenade in the hands of a child.
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There is one expanding horror in American life. It is that our long odyssey toward liberty, democracy and freedom-for-all may be achieved in such a way that utopia remains forever closed, and we live in freedom and hell, debased of style, not individual from one another, void of courage, our fear rationalized away.
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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.
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