Quote

I was now at a university in New York, a professor of existential psychology with the not inconsiderable thesis that magic, dread, and the perception of death were the roots of motivation.

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
Motivation
Professor
York
Existential
Magic
Professors
Death
Dread
Psychology
University
Perception
Inconsiderable
Roots
Thesis

More quotes by Norman Mailer

Image
So you come soon to power, but you have merely inherited the crisis and yours is the profit of cancer.
Norman Mailer
Image
Boredom slays more of existence than war.
Norman Mailer
Image
The contradictory remarks of politicians are forgotten the more asinine predictions of pundits are buried with mercy.
Norman Mailer
Image
Faction is that hybrid of documented fact and novelistic elaboration.
Norman Mailer
Image
To know what you want to say is not the best condition for writing a novel. Novels go happiest when you discover something you did not know you knew: an insight into one of your opaque characters, a metaphor that startles you... a truth... that used to elude you.
Norman Mailer
Image
I always start a book for money. If you're married five times you have to.
Norman Mailer
Image
God is a creator, not a law giver.
Norman Mailer
Image
There is probably no heterosexual alive who is not preoccupied with his latent homosexuality.
Norman Mailer
Image
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
Image
The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again.
Norman Mailer
Image
For what does it mean to be a hero? It requires you to be prepared to deal with forces larger than yourself.
Norman Mailer
Image
No heart is so hard as the timid heart.
Norman Mailer
Image
A high church for the true mediocre.
Norman Mailer
Image
I do believe that America's deepest political sickness is that it is a self-righteous nation.
Norman Mailer
Image
No physical activity is so vain as boxing. A man gets into the ring to attract admiration. In no sport, therefore, can you be more humiliated.
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
Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union by increasing armaments.
Norman Mailer
Image
I had a quick grasp of the secret to sanity, it had become the ability to hold the maximum of impossible combinations in one's mind.
Norman Mailer
Image
We think of Marilyn who was every man's love affair with America. Marilyn Monroe who was blonde and beautiful and had a sweet little rinky-dink of a voice and all the cleanliness of all the clean American backyards.
Norman Mailer
Image
There's nothing glorious about being a professional. . . . Professionalism probably comes down to being able to work on a bad day.
Norman Mailer