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

More quotes by Norman Mailer

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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.
Norman Mailer
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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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Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day.
Norman Mailer
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The art of the novel is to arrive at that artless point where your characters become more real than yourself.
Norman Mailer
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Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment.
Norman Mailer
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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.
Norman Mailer
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The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.
Norman Mailer
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What is there about polarity that is matter becoming more complex?
Norman Mailer
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A high church for the true mediocre.
Norman Mailer
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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.
Norman Mailer
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The private terror of the liberal spirit is invariably suicide, not murder.
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You never do find out what makes you tick, and after a while it's unimportant.
Norman Mailer
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We're all divided souls, we've got two natures in us, You measure schizophrenia not by the fact that you're divided but how well the divisions speak to one another.
Norman Mailer
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I always start a book for money. If you're married five times you have to.
Norman Mailer
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A book of great beauty and manically exquisite insight with a wild and deadly humor . . . The only American novelist who may conceivably be possessed by genius.
Norman Mailer
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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.
Norman Mailer
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The Irish are the only men who know how to cry for the dirty polluted blood of all the world.
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.
Norman Mailer
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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