436 Quotes by Norman Mailer

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.

There’s an old Talmudic belief that you build a fence around an impulse. If that’s not good enough, you build a fence around the fence.

Retaining the phrases was a treacherous enterprise, however. His greatest problem these days had been boredom. Now he had discovered its loyal assistant – poor memory!

Our minds race ahead of us and summon strangers.

Think of how hot a fire must be to call out the will of iron that is in the ore. Iron is strong against every force except the one that made it into iron.

When I read it, I don’t wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write.

You, Lowell, beloved poet of many, what do you know of the dirt and the dark deliveries of the necessary? What do you know of dignity hard-achieved, and dignity lost through innocence, and dignity lost by sacrifice for a cause one cannot name. What do you know about getting fat against your will, and turning into a clown of an arriviste baron when you would rather be an eagle or a count, or rarest of all, some natural aristocrat from these damned democratic states.

I am not here only so that the blind might see, but to teach those who thought they could see that they are blind.

There’s that popular misconception of man as something between a brute and an angel. Actually man is in transit between brute and God.