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I take it for granted that there's a side of me that loves public action, and there's another side of me that really wants to be alone and work and write. And I've learned to alternate the two as matters develop.

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
Matter
Learned
Take
Sides
Alternate
Writing
Public
Granted
Work
Alone
Develop
Really
Write
Loves
Action
Matters
Another
Side
Two
Wants

More quotes by Norman Mailer

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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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Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.
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The sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less important, that the romantic spirit has dried up, that there is no shame today. We're all getting so mean and small and petty and ridiculous, and we all live under the threat of extermination.
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The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.
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Writing can wreck your body. You sit there on the chair hour after hour and sweat your guts out to get a few words.
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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.
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Chicago is the great American city, New York is one of the capitals of the world, and Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic San Francisco is a lady
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What is there about polarity that is matter becoming more complex?
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Movies are more likely than literature to reach deep feelings in people.
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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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Tough guys don't dance. You had better believe it.
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Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic.
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When the time comes, they won't ask what kind of a Jew you are.
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Hip is the sophistication of the wise primitive in a giant jungle.
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I met Jack Kennedy in November, 1946... We went out on a double date and it turned out to be a fair evening for me. I seduced a girl who would have been bored by a diamond as big as the Ritz.
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So you come soon to power, but you have merely inherited the crisis and yours is the profit of cancer.
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A really good style comes only when a man has become as good as he can be. Style is character. A good style cannot come from a bad undisciplined character.
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Obsession is the single most wasteful human activity, because with an obsession you keep coming back and back and back to the same question and never get an answer.
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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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To make an Army work you have to have every man in it fitted into a fear ladder... The Army functions best when you're frightened of the man above you, and contemptuous of your subordinates.
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