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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.

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
Truth
Traps
Change
Prince
Quick
Actor
Style
Actors
Artist
Switching
Become
Trap

More quotes by Norman Mailer

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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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Alimony is the curse of the writing class.
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You have the right to speak your mind.
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Nearly everything in the scheme of things works to dull a first-rate talent. But the worst probably is cowardice.
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The difference between writing a book and being on television is the difference between conceiving a child and having a baby made in a test tube.
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We have an absolute right in a democracy to argue about a war.
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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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I don't trust a man who uses the word evil eighteen times in ten minutes. If you're half evil, nothing soothes you more than to think the person you are opposed to is totally evil.
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The women's movement is filled with tyrants, just as men's political movements are equally filled.
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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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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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What's not realized about good novelists is that they're as competitive as good athletes. They study each other - where the other person is good and where the person is less good. Writers are like that but don't admit it.
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Somewhere, something incredible happened in history - the wrong guys won.
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Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.
Norman Mailer
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Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union by increasing armaments.
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To be married to a good woman is to live with tender surprise.
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Sex is not only a divine and beautiful activity it's a murderous activity. People kill each other in bed. Some of the greatest crimes ever committed were committed in bed. And no weapons were used.
Norman Mailer
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Writer’s block is only a failure of the ego.
Norman Mailer
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There are these two kinds of patriotism. There's blind patriotism, unflagging patriotism. And then there's the patriotism that says I live in a democracy and it's very important for the health and the life of this democracy that it get better all the time, not get worse.
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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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