436 Quotes by Norman Mailer

What were the phenomena of the world today? If I knew little else, I knew the answer – war, and the preparations for new war.

Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens the Devils to contest his vision.

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

Sequestered in the depths of the average pacifist – as one will invariably discover – resides a killer. That is why the person has become a pacifist in the first place.

So long as you use a knife, there’s some love left.

We’re all divided souls, we’ve got two natures in us, You measure schizophrenia not by the fact that you’re divided but how well the divisions speak to one another.

Any workout which does not involve a certain minimum of danger or responsibility does not improve the body – it just wears it out.

What’s not realized about good novelists is that they’re as competitive as good athletes. They study each other – where the other person is good and where the person is less good. Writers are like that but don’t admit it.

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.