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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
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Essayist
Film Director
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Film Producer
Historian
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Stage Actor
Long Branch
New Jersey
Norman Kingsley Mailer
Andreas Wilson
Writing
Public
Granted
Work
Alone
Develop
Really
Write
Loves
Action
Matters
Another
Side
Two
Wants
Matter
Learned
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More quotes by Norman Mailer
Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.
Norman Mailer
Growth, in some curious way, I suspect, depends on being always in motion just a little bit, one way or another.
Norman Mailer
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
There's nothing glorious about being a professional. . . . Professionalism probably comes down to being able to work on a bad day.
Norman Mailer
It's not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.
Norman Mailer
Harsh words live in the dungeon of the heart
Norman Mailer
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
Faction is that hybrid of documented fact and novelistic elaboration.
Norman Mailer
...never have I subscribed to the doctrine of willful rejection of the world or its visual image. To the non-objectivist this act of impiety may be shockingly impure, but God, I have no desire to be either hollow or sterile.
Norman Mailer
Writer’s block is only a failure of the ego.
Norman Mailer
Like all men who are Napoleonic in their ambitionshe has instincts about the nature of growth, a lover's sense of the momentof crisis, and he knewhow costly is defeat when it is not soothed by greater consciousness, and how wasteful is the profit of victory when there is not the courage to employ it.
Norman Mailer
Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment.
Norman Mailer
You do not really wish to hear more of the Battle of Kadesh. Let me say only that human fat, gorged in considerable quantity, has an intoxicating effect. I became ... drunk.
Norman Mailer
Murder offers the promise of vast relief. It is never unsexual.
Norman Mailer
We think of Marilyn who was every man's love affair with America. Marilyn Monroe who was blonde and beautiful and had a sweet little rinky-dink of a voice and all the cleanliness of all the clean American backyards.
Norman Mailer
The great power in America is the corporations - we`re a corporate country. We`re run by a CEO and the stockholders have very little to say on how the corporation is run. Fine, the board of directors run it and the stockholders can just be disgruntled, but who gives a damn?
Norman Mailer
Somerset Maugham ... wrote somewhere that Nobody is any better than he ought to be.... I carried it along with me as a working philosophy, but I suppose that finally I would have to take exception to the thought ... or else the universe is just an elaborate clock.
Norman Mailer
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
I hate everything which is not in myself.
Norman Mailer
I've made an ass of myself so many times I often wonder if I am one.
Norman Mailer