Activity Quote by Norman Mailer

“Obsession is the single most wasteful human activity, because with an obsession you keep coming back and back and back to the same question and never get an answer.”

Norman Mailer

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More by Norman Mailer

Conservatives are people who look at a tree and feel instinctively that it is more beautiful than anything they can name. But when it…

Norman Mailer

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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…

Norman Mailer

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

Norman Mailer

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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.

Norman Mailer

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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…

Norman Mailer

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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…

Norman Mailer

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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…

Norman Mailer

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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…

Norman Mailer

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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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Explore all 355 Norman Mailer quotes

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Where I grew up, learning was a collective activity. But when I got to school and tried to share learning with other students that…

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It must be assumed and established as a principle, that the right of private property must be regarded as sacred. Wherefore, the law ought…

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Each man is capable of doing one thing well. If he attempts several, he will fail to achieve distinction in any.

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And also I think the rise of other, you could say, destinations for international jihadis mean that Pakistan isn't necessarily the place where people…

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