Norman Mailer Quotes (17 quotations)
1. Culture's worth huge, huge risks. Without culture we're all totalitarian beasts. - Norman Mailer
2. Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. - Norman Mailer
3. I felt something shift to murder in me. I felt that I was an outlaw, a psychic outlaw, and I liked it. - Norman Mailer
4. It's not a good idea to put your wife into a novel; not your latest wife anyway. - Norman Mailer
5. New York is one of the capitals of the world and Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic, San Francisco is a lady, Boston has become Urban Renewal, Philadelphia and Baltimore and Washington wink like dull diamonds in the smog of Eastern Megalopolis, and New Orleans is unremarkable past the French Quarter. Detroit is a one-trade town, Pittsburgh has lost its golden triangle, St. Louis has become the golden arch of the corporation, and nights in Kansas City close early. The oil depletion allowance makes Houston and Dallas naught but checkerboards for this sort of game. But Chicago is a great American city. Perhaps it is the last of the great American cities. - Norman Mailer
6. Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists. - Norman Mailer
7. One thing I've learned in all these years is not to make love when you really don't feel it; there's probably nothing worse you can do to yourself than that. - Norman Mailer
8. One will feel the same subtle nausea coming into the city or waiting to depart from it that one feels now in such plastic catacombs as O'Hare's reception center in Chicago. - Norman Mailer
9. Patterned after an Italian Renaissance palace, it is 88 times as large and one millionth as valuable to the continuation of man. that Pentagon of traveling salesmen. - Norman Mailer
10. Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment. - Norman Mailer
11. Short-term amnesia is not the worst affliction if you have an Irish flair for the sauce. - Norman Mailer
12. The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level. - Norman Mailer
13. The highest prize in a world of men is the most beautiful woman available on your arm and living there in her heart loyal to you. - Norman Mailer
14. There are four stages in a marriage. First there's the affair, then the marriage, then children and finally the fourth stage, without which you cannot know a woman, the divorce. - Norman Mailer
15. There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same. - Norman Mailer
16. When I read it, I don't wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write. - Norman Mailer
17. With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance. - Norman Mailer
2. Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. - Norman Mailer
3. I felt something shift to murder in me. I felt that I was an outlaw, a psychic outlaw, and I liked it. - Norman Mailer
4. It's not a good idea to put your wife into a novel; not your latest wife anyway. - Norman Mailer
5. New York is one of the capitals of the world and Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic, San Francisco is a lady, Boston has become Urban Renewal, Philadelphia and Baltimore and Washington wink like dull diamonds in the smog of Eastern Megalopolis, and New Orleans is unremarkable past the French Quarter. Detroit is a one-trade town, Pittsburgh has lost its golden triangle, St. Louis has become the golden arch of the corporation, and nights in Kansas City close early. The oil depletion allowance makes Houston and Dallas naught but checkerboards for this sort of game. But Chicago is a great American city. Perhaps it is the last of the great American cities. - Norman Mailer
6. Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists. - Norman Mailer
7. One thing I've learned in all these years is not to make love when you really don't feel it; there's probably nothing worse you can do to yourself than that. - Norman Mailer
8. One will feel the same subtle nausea coming into the city or waiting to depart from it that one feels now in such plastic catacombs as O'Hare's reception center in Chicago. - Norman Mailer
9. Patterned after an Italian Renaissance palace, it is 88 times as large and one millionth as valuable to the continuation of man. that Pentagon of traveling salesmen. - Norman Mailer
10. Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment. - Norman Mailer
11. Short-term amnesia is not the worst affliction if you have an Irish flair for the sauce. - Norman Mailer
12. The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level. - Norman Mailer
13. The highest prize in a world of men is the most beautiful woman available on your arm and living there in her heart loyal to you. - Norman Mailer
14. There are four stages in a marriage. First there's the affair, then the marriage, then children and finally the fourth stage, without which you cannot know a woman, the divorce. - Norman Mailer
15. There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same. - Norman Mailer
16. When I read it, I don't wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write. - Norman Mailer
17. With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance. - Norman Mailer
