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I never saw love as luck, as that gift from the gods which put everything else in place, and allowed you to succeed. No, I saw love as reward. One could find it only after one's virtue, or one's courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity, or loss, has succeeded in stirring the power of creation.

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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New Jersey
Norman Kingsley Mailer
Andreas Wilson
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More quotes by Norman Mailer

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The private terror of the liberal spirit is invariably suicide, not murder.
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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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When the time comes, they won't ask what kind of a Jew you are.
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The natural role of twentieth-century man is anxiety.
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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.
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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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Murder offers the promise of vast relief. It is never unsexual.
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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.
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So the blind will lead the blind, and the deaf shout warnings to one another until their voices are lost.
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I don't think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for.
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As Kierkegaard was the first to suggest, we can never know where our prayers are likely to go nor from whom the answers will come. When we think we are nearest to God, we could be assisting the Devil.
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The highest prize in a world of men is the most beautiful woman available on your arm and living there in her heart loyal to you.
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The contradictory remarks of politicians are forgotten the more asinine predictions of pundits are buried with mercy.
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It all comes down to who does the dishes.
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Boredom slays more of existence than war.
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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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Tough guys don't dance. You had better believe it.
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I always start a book for money. If you're married five times you have to.
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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.
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There's that popular misconception of man as something between a brute and an angel. Actually man is in transit between brute and God.
Norman Mailer