Quote

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.

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
Cutting
Told
Happiness
Earth
Thinking
People
Surgeons
Happiest
Paid

More quotes by Norman Mailer

Image
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.
Norman Mailer
Image
Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.
Norman Mailer
Image
Cancer is the growth of madness denied.
Norman Mailer
Image
Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment.
Norman Mailer
Image
Boredom slays more of existence than war.
Norman Mailer
Image
There are four stages to marriage. First there's the affair, then there's the marriage, then children, and finally the fourth stage, without which you cannot know a woman, the divorce.
Norman Mailer
Image
Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like putting a live grenade in the hands of a child.
Norman Mailer
Image
Tough guys don't dance. You had better believe it.
Norman Mailer
Image
I take it for granted that there's a side of me that loves public action, and there's another side of me that really wants to be alone and work and write. And I've learned to alternate the two as matters develop.
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
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.
Norman Mailer
Image
People who are greedy have extraordinary capacities for waste-they must, they take in too much.
Norman Mailer
Image
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.
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
We sail across dominions barely seen, washed by the swells of time. We plow through fields of magnetism. Past and future come together on thunderheads and our dead hearts live with lightning in the wounds of the Gods.
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
What characterizes a member of a minority group is that he is forced to see himself as both exceptional and insignificant, marvelous and awful, good and evil.
Norman Mailer
Image
Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic.
Norman Mailer
Image
The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again.
Norman Mailer
Image
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.
Norman Mailer