Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Norman Mailer

Image
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.
Norman Mailer
Image
You have the right to speak your mind.
Norman Mailer
Image
Cancer is the growth of madness denied.
Norman Mailer
Image
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.
Norman Mailer
Image
MIke Lee writes with honesty, penetration, wit and the ability to surprise the reader with an unexpected turn from time to time that enriches the experience.
Norman Mailer
Image
The world's not what I want it to be. But then no one ever said I had the right to design the world.
Norman Mailer
Image
Love was love, one could find it with anyone, one could find it anywhere. It was just that you could never keep it. Not unless you were ready to die for it.
Norman Mailer
Image
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.
Norman Mailer
Image
Writing can wreck your body. You sit there on the chair hour after hour and sweat your guts out to get a few words.
Norman Mailer
Image
Chicago was a town where nobody could forget how the money was made. It was picked up from floors still slippery with blood.
Norman Mailer
Image
Faction is that hybrid of documented fact and novelistic elaboration.
Norman Mailer
Image
Hip is the sophistication of the wise primitive in a giant jungle.
Norman Mailer
Image
The natural role of twentieth-century man is anxiety.
Norman Mailer
Image
Even an evil man can have principles—he can be true to his own evil, which is not always so easy.
Norman Mailer
Image
Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic.
Norman Mailer
Image
I can`t get excited about politics, but I love it as a game. Because what I love in politics - this is very selfish of me, but who cares - what I do love in politics is this ability it has to make you think in new ways.
Norman Mailer
Image
With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance.
Norman Mailer
Image
Writer’s block is only a failure of the ego.
Norman Mailer
Image
I think the internet is the greatest waste of time since masturbation was discovered.
Norman Mailer
Image
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