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A nation fights well in proportion to the amount of men and materials it has. And the other equation is that the individual soldier in that army is a more effective soldier the poorer his standard of living has been in the past.

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
Film Editor
Film Producer
Historian
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Stage Actor
Long Branch
New Jersey
Norman Kingsley Mailer
Andreas Wilson
Living
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War
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We divorced ourselves from the materials of the earth, the rock, the wood, the iron ore we looked to new materials which were cooked in vats, long complex derivatives of urine which we called plastic. They had no odor of the living, ... their touch was alien to nature. ... [They proliferated] like the matastases of cancer cells.
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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.
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Hip is the sophistication of the wise primitive in a giant jungle.
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Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.
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Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment.
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I've made an ass of myself so many times I often wonder if I am one.
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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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There's a subterranean impetus towards pornography so powerful that half the business world is juiced by the sort of half sex that one finds in advertisements.
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There is probably no heterosexual alive who is not preoccupied with his latent homosexuality.
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One of the reasons the English got through all their falls and the loss of their empire, all their disasters, their strikes, their difficulties, their wars through the years was they had Shakespeare to fall back on. And they speak well in England.
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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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I am not here only so that the blind might see, but to teach those who thought they could see that they are blind
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The Irish are the only men who know how to cry for the dirty polluted blood of all the world.
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I did like Robert Vavra's book not only for its so very good photographs but for the text as well. He's no ordinary fellow, obviously.
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God is a creator, not a law giver.
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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.
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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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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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For what does it mean to be a hero? It requires you to be prepared to deal with forces larger than yourself.
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Television is coitus interruptus brought into aesthetics.
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