Writing Quotes by Norman Mailer

Alimony is the curse of the writing class.

— Norman Mailer

Writers don't have lifestyles. They just sit in little rooms and write.

— Norman Mailer

I always start a book for money. If you're married five times you have to.

— Norman Mailer

Writer’s block is only a failure of the ego.

— Norman Mailer

What's the use of being a writer if you can't irritate a great many people?

— Norman Mailer

Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day.

— Norman Mailer

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

— Norman Mailer

Over-certified adjectives are the mark of most best-seller writing

— Norman Mailer

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

— 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

Only another writer can know how much damage writing a novel can do to you. It's an unnatural activity to sit at…

— Norman Mailer

“Writing a novel is the closest thing a male writer will ever get to the experience of childbirth.”

— Norman Mailer

Writing can wreck your body. You sit there on the chair hour after hour and sweat your guts out to get a…

— Norman Mailer

You can't be a serious writer of fiction unless you believe the story you are telling.

— Norman Mailer

The art of the novel is to arrive at that artless point where your characters become more real than yourself.

— Norman Mailer

“Metaphor reveals a writer’s true grasp of life. To the degree that you have no metaphor, you have not yet lived much…

— Norman Mailer

MIke Lee writes with honesty, penetration, wit and the ability to surprise the reader with an unexpected turn from time to time…

— Norman Mailer

To know what you want to say is not the best condition for writing a novel. Novels go happiest when you discover…

— Norman Mailer

“Just as a fighter has to feel that he possesses the right to do physical damage to another man, so a writer…

— Norman Mailer

I don't read other writers because I'm writing all the time. It's too disturbing to read a writer with a good style…

— Norman Mailer

“More sensitive than others in the beginning, we have to develop the will, the stamina, the determination, and the insensitivity to take…

— Norman Mailer

I take it for granted that there's a side of me that loves public action, and there's another side of me that…

— Norman Mailer

What's not realized about good novelists is that they're as competitive as good athletes. They study each other - where the other…

— Norman Mailer

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

— Norman Mailer

It's very bad to write a novel by act of will. I can do a book of nonfiction work that way -…

— Norman Mailer

Over the years, I've found one rule. It is the only one I give on those occasions when I talk about writing.…

— Norman Mailer

The writer can grow as a person or he can shrink. ... His curiosity, his reaction to life must not diminish. The…

— Norman Mailer

Part of living, part of becoming a wise man or a wise woman, is to get to that point where you can…

— Norman Mailer

“The book was sloppily written in many parts (the words came too quickly and too easily) and there was hardly a noun…

— 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

“(On choosing to write the book in third person, and using his name Norman as the nom de plume) NOW, OUR MAN…

— Norman Mailer

“Let every writer tell his own lies That's freedom of the press.”

— Norman Mailer

You're gambling with something vital. Most writers get smashed egos.

— Norman Mailer

The way you write affects what you say.

— Norman Mailer

Amateurs... venture into scenes that a writer with more experience (and more professional concern) would bypass or eschew altogether.

— Norman Mailer

The difference between writing a book and being on television is the difference between conceiving a child and having a baby made…

— Norman Mailer

Since great writers communicate a vision of existence, one can't borrow their methods. The method is married to the vision.

— Norman Mailer

“Poems should be like pins which prick the skin of boredom and leave a glow equal in its pride to the gate…

— Norman Mailer