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Nearly everything in the scheme of things works to dull a first-rate talent. But the worst probably is cowardice.
Norman Mailer
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Norman Mailer
Age: 84 †
Born: 1923
Born: January 31
Died: 2007
Died: November 10
Actor
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Film Director
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Journalist
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Long Branch
New Jersey
Norman Kingsley Mailer
Andreas Wilson
Worst
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Probably
Cowardice
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Everything
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More quotes by Norman Mailer
The natural role of twentieth-century man is anxiety.
Norman Mailer
The great power in America is the corporations - we`re a corporate country. We`re run by a CEO and the stockholders have very little to say on how the corporation is run. Fine, the board of directors run it and the stockholders can just be disgruntled, but who gives a damn?
Norman Mailer
No heart is so hard as the timid heart.
Norman Mailer
The difference between writing a book and being on television is the difference between conceiving a child and having a baby made in a test tube.
Norman Mailer
I usually need a can of beer to prime me.
Norman Mailer
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
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
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
What is there about polarity that is matter becoming more complex?
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Murder offers the promise of vast relief. It is never unsexual.
Norman Mailer
Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.
Norman Mailer
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
The Irish are the only men who know how to cry for the dirty polluted blood of all the world.
Norman Mailer
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
I respect most boxers because they're violent people who learned to discipline themselves ... a good boxer is an artist ... Boxing is existential - some fights are better than others.
Norman Mailer
Simple narcissism gives the power of beasts to politicians, professional wrestlers and female movie stars.
Norman Mailer
The sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less important, that the romantic spirit has dried up, that there is no shame today. We're all getting so mean and small and petty and ridiculous, and we all live under the threat of extermination.
Norman Mailer
One thing I've learned in all these years is not to make love when you really don't feel it there's probably nothing worse you can do to yourself than that.
Norman Mailer
The world's not what I want it to be. But then no one ever said I had the right to design the world.
Norman Mailer
What's not realized about good novelists is that they're as competitive as good athletes. They study each other - where the other person is good and where the person is less good. Writers are like that but don't admit it.
Norman Mailer