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Even an evil man can have principles—he can be true to his own evil, which is not always so easy.

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
Always
Men
Principles
Evil
Easy
True
Even

More quotes by Norman Mailer

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On a late-winter evening in 1983, while driving through fog along the Maine coast, recollections of old campfires began to drift into the March mist, and I thought of the Abnaki Indians of the Algonquin tribe who dwelt near Bangor a thousand years ago.
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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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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?
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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.
Norman Mailer
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I can`t get excited about politics, but I love it as a game. Because what I love in politics - this is very selfish of me, but who cares - what I do love in politics is this ability it has to make you think in new ways.
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You do not really wish to hear more of the Battle of Kadesh. Let me say only that human fat, gorged in considerable quantity, has an intoxicating effect. I became ... drunk.
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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.
Norman Mailer
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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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The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again.
Norman Mailer
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There`s a tendency for Americans, particularly the simpler you are, the more you believe in the president as the kind of person to be.
Norman Mailer
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Somerset Maugham ... wrote somewhere that Nobody is any better than he ought to be.... I carried it along with me as a working philosophy, but I suppose that finally I would have to take exception to the thought ... or else the universe is just an elaborate clock.
Norman Mailer
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Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.
Norman Mailer
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We love those who can lead us to a place we will never reach without them.
Norman Mailer
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The natural role of twentieth-century man is anxiety.
Norman Mailer
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Dying can't be all that difficult-up to now everyone has managed to do it.
Norman Mailer
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The art of the novel is to arrive at that artless point where your characters become more real than yourself.
Norman Mailer
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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
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Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union by increasing armaments.
Norman Mailer
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To be married to a good woman is to live with tender surprise.
Norman Mailer
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The Irish are the only men who know how to cry for the dirty polluted blood of all the world.
Norman Mailer