436 Quotes by Norman Mailer

I’ve made an ass of myself so many times I often wonder if I am one.

Tolstoy teaches us that compassion is of value and enriches our life only when compassion is severe, which is to say when we can perceive everything that is good and bad about a character but are still able to feel that the sum of us as human beings is probably a little more good than awful. In any case, good or bad, it reminds us that life is like a gladiators’ arena for the soul and so we can feel strengthened by those who endure, and feel awe and pity for those who do not.

Since great writers communicate a vision of existence, one can’t borrow their methods. The method is married to the vision.

I was thinking that surgeons had to be the happiest people on earth. To cut people up and get paid for it-that’s happiness, I told myself.

Repetition kills the soul.

I no longer gave a sick dog’s drop for the wisdom, the reliability and the authority of the public’s literary mind, those creeps and old ladies of vested reviewing.

Most people, no matter how brilliant, are vessels. Once you come to the end of what is interesting in them, you can touch the side of the jar. There will be nothing afterward but repetition of what you have learned already. It might take a night, a year, or half a lifetime, but once you can reach the side of the vessel, a good part of the larger feeling is gone.

People who live under fascism are not only miserable but they’re full of shame. You just don’t go in and inject democracy into them. They’re half crazy with their own...

While I’m working on a book, I rarely read anything more than The New York Times. Which may have the long-term effect of flattening my style.