Norman Mailer

Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.

— Norman Mailer

There is a no man's land between sex and love, and it alters in the night.

— Norman Mailer

I become an actor, a quick-change artist, as if I can trap the Prince of Truth in the act of switching a…

— Norman Mailer

Somewhere, something incredible happened in history - the wrong guys won.

— Norman Mailer

Existentialism is the kind of philosophy that makes for legendary children.

— Norman Mailer

Great hope has no real footing unless one is willing to face into the doom that may also be on the way.…

— Norman Mailer

The sole virtue of losing your short-term memory is that it does free you to be your own editor.

— Norman Mailer

“There seems to be endless capacity for strife in your system.” “Of course there is. Doesn’t that fit human nature?”

— Norman Mailer

Chicago was a town where nobody could forget how the money was made. It was picked up from floors still slippery with…

— Norman Mailer

“The feeling of joy came up in me again the way the lyric of a song might remind a man on the…

— Norman Mailer

Each day a few more lies eat into the seed with which we are born, little institutional lies from the print of…

— Norman Mailer

If God is all good, then He is not all powerful. If God is all powerful, then He is not all good.…

— Norman Mailer

We sail across dominions barely seen, washed by the swells of time. We plow through fields of magnetism. Past and future come…

— Norman Mailer

I did like Robert Vavra's book not only for its so very good photographs but for the text as well. He's no…

— Norman Mailer

The greater the power of any subjective state, the more total is a Romantic's assumption that everyone understands exactly what he is…

— Norman Mailer

“There's an old Talmudic belief that you build a fence around an impulse. If that's not good enough, you build a fence…

— Norman Mailer

“There was the old myth of divine intervention. You blasphemed, and a lightning bolt struck you. That was a little steep too.…

— Norman Mailer

Part of the oncoming demise (of New York during its terrible fiscal crisis) is that none of us can simply believe it.…

— Norman Mailer

“Tolstoy teaches us that compassion is of value and enriches our life only when compassion is severe, which is to say that…

— Norman Mailer

I've always felt that my relationship to the United States is analogous to a marriage. I love this country. I hate it.…

— Norman Mailer

“It is not uncommon for fighters’ camps to be gloomy. In heavy training, fighters live in dimensions of boredom others do not…

— Norman Mailer

The White Protestant's ultimate sympathy must be with science, factology, and committee rather than with sex, birth, heat, flesh, creation, the sweet…

— Norman Mailer

We divorced ourselves from the materials of the earth, the rock, the wood, the iron ore; we looked to new materials which…

— Norman Mailer

“He had been given the job and he was going to do it. But now for the first time he hated it…

— Norman Mailer

In America few people will trust you unless you are irreverent.

— Norman Mailer

Mailer's Law: A thing either gets better or it costs more to run it the way it was.

— Norman Mailer

For what does it mean to be a hero? It requires you to be prepared to deal with forces larger than yourself.

— Norman Mailer

Murder offers the promise of vast relief. It is never unsexual.

— Norman Mailer

Even an evil man can have principles—he can be true to his own evil, which is not always so easy.

— 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

“The Anti-Semiten. Why don’t they ever learn? Why does God permit it?” Roth sneered. “God is a luxury I don’t give myself.”

— Norman Mailer

Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.

— Norman Mailer

“Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision.”

— Norman Mailer

“Perhaps the measure of the best art is that it does not excite envy.”

— Norman Mailer

What is there about polarity that is matter becoming more complex?

— Norman Mailer

Every time a story about me appears in a newspaper, I am injured professionally.

— Norman Mailer

“If Moloch is not fed, the last stage of hell will vanish, and with it, the apparatus of hell.”

— Norman Mailer

Insanity consists of building major structures upon foundations which do not exist.

— Norman Mailer

The women's movement is filled with tyrants, just as men's political movements are equally filled.

— Norman Mailer

So the blind will lead the blind, and the deaf shout warnings to one another until their voices are lost.

— Norman Mailer