436 Quotes by Norman Mailer

As many people die from an excess of timidity as from bravery.

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

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

Chicago is the great American city, New York is one of the capitals of the world, and Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic; San Francisco is a lady

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again.

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

I had a quick grasp of the secret to sanity, it had become the ability to hold the maximum of impossible combinations in one's mind.

The essence of spirit ... was to choose the thing which did not better one's position but made it more perilous. That was why the world he knew was poor, for it insisted morality and caution were identical.