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What were the phenomena of the world today? If I knew little else, I knew the answer - war, and the preparations for new war.

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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Essayist
Film Director
Film Editor
Film Producer
Historian
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Stage Actor
Long Branch
New Jersey
Norman Kingsley Mailer
Andreas Wilson
Little
Preparation
World
Answer
Answers
Knew
War
Else
Littles
Preparations
Today
Phenomena

More quotes by Norman Mailer

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Is one human? Or merely alive? Like a blade of grass equal to all existance in the moment it is torn? Yes. If pain is fundament, then a blade of grass can know all there is.
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With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance.
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Conservatives are people who look at a tree and feel instinctively that it is more beautiful than anything they can name. But when it comes to defending that tree against a highway, they will go for the highway.
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Chicago was a town where nobody could forget how the money was made. It was picked up from floors still slippery with blood.
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It all comes down to who does the dishes.
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There is one expanding horror in American life. It is that our long odyssey toward liberty, democracy and freedom-for-all may be achieved in such a way that utopia remains forever closed, and we live in freedom and hell, debased of style, not individual from one another, void of courage, our fear rationalized away.
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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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Writer’s block is only a failure of the ego.
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We have an absolute right in a democracy to argue about a war.
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The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.
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I become an actor, a quick-change artist, as if I can trap the Prince of Truth in the act of switching a style.
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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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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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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.
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Obsession is the single most wasteful human activity, because with an obsession you keep coming back and back and back to the same question and never get an answer.
Norman Mailer
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Alimony is the curse of the writing class.
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I've made an ass of myself so many times I often wonder if I am one.
Norman Mailer
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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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Simple narcissism gives the power of beasts to politicians, professional wrestlers and female movie stars.
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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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