Artist Quotes by Norman Mailer

10 Artist quotes by Norman Mailer

Mailer’s voice cuts straight to the core of what it means to make art, mixing grit with a restless intellect. This short collection offers a punchy, no‑frills look at his take on the creative process.

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With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your…

Norman Mailer

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I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It…

Norman Mailer

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The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.

Norman Mailer

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

Norman Mailer

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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…

Norman Mailer

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I respect most boxers because they're violent people who learned to discipline themselves ... a good boxer is an artist ... Boxing…

Norman Mailer

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I am convinced the most unfortunate people are those who would make an art of love. It sours other effort. Of all…

Norman Mailer

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I'm a great believer in the hereafter, in karma, in reincarnation. It does make sense. I believe that God is not just…

Norman Mailer

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Decade after decade, artists came to paint the light of Provincetown, and comparisons were made to the lagoons of Venice and the…

Norman Mailer

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We live in a time which has created the art of the absurd. It is our art. It contains happenings, Pop art,…

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…

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There's a subterranean impetus towards pornography so powerful that half the business world is juiced by the sort of half sex that one finds…

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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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Writing for a newspaper is like running a revolutionary war. You go to battle not when you are ready, but when action offers itself.

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I would introduce myself if it were not useless. The name I had last night will not be the same as the name I…

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“City Point is so beautiful, she says. In the night they cannot see the garbage that litters the beach, the seaweed and driftwood, the…

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“I find it’s more fun to write about something that you don’t know completely and that you will discover on route. A dear friend…

Norman Mailer

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Short-term amnesia is not the worst affliction if you have an Irish flair for the sauce.

Norman Mailer

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

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I have always had this very strong, call it a feeling, call it a prejudice, call it a conviction ... that the mysteries are…

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I do believe that America's deepest political sickness is that it is a self-righteous nation.

Norman Mailer

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America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants…

Norman Mailer

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Armstrong, sitting in the commander's seat, spacesuit on, helmet on, plugged into electrical and environmental umbilical's, is a man who is not only a…

Norman Mailer