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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.

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
Read
Flattening
Times
Rarely
Anything
Effect
May
York
Book
Effects
Long
Style
Term
Working

More quotes by Norman Mailer

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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.
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The nightmare in every democracy, the very nightmare, is if it gets worse and worse and worse, we could end up totalitarian.
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I hate everything which is not in myself.
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If God is all good, then He is not all powerful. If God is all powerful, then He is not all good. I am a disbeliever is the omnipotence of God because of the Holocaust. But for 35 years, I have been believing that He is doing the best he can.
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What characterizes a member of a minority group is that he is forced to see himself as both exceptional and insignificant, marvelous and awful, good and evil.
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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.
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Cancer is the growth of madness denied.
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The art of the novel is to arrive at that artless point where your characters become more real than yourself.
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Movies are more likely than literature to reach deep feelings in people.
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The private terror of the liberal spirit is invariably suicide, not murder.
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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.
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You can't be a serious writer of fiction unless you believe the story you are telling.
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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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Prevarication, like honesty, is reflexive, and soon becomes a sturdy habit, as reliable as truth.
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It's not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.
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When the time comes, they won't ask what kind of a Jew you are.
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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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Dying can't be all that difficult-up to now everyone has managed to do it.
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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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Masculinity is not something given to you, but something you gain. And you gain it by winning small battles with honor.
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