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The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.

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
Consciousness
Moral
Purpose
Artist
Exacerbate
Art
Intensify
Even
Final
People
Finals
Necessary

More quotes by Norman Mailer

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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.
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Murder offers the promise of vast relief. It is never unsexual.
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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.
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God is a creator, not a law giver.
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Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic.
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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.
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There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.
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To be married to a good woman is to live with tender surprise.
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Hip is the sophistication of the wise primitive in a giant jungle.
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I no longer gave a sick dog's drop for the wisdom, the reliability and the authority of the public's literary mind, those creeps and old ladies of vested reviewing.
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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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A really good style comes only when a man has become as good as he can be. Style is character. A good style cannot come from a bad undisciplined character.
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Somewhere, something incredible happened in history - the wrong guys won.
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Masculinity is not something given to you, but something you gain. And you gain it by winning small battles with honor.
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The war between being and nothingness is the underlying illness of the twentieth century. Boredom slays more of existence than war.
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The Frenchman Jean-PaulSartre ... had a dialectical mind good as a machine for cybernetics, immense in its way, he could peel a nuance like an onion, but he had no sense of evil, the anguish of God, and the possible existence of Satan.
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When I read it [Tough Guys Don't Dance], I don't wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write.
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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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Tough guys don't dance. You had better believe it.
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Growth, in some curious way, I suspect, depends on being always in motion just a little bit, one way or another.
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