436 Quotes by Norman Mailer

For what does it mean to be a hero? It requires you to be prepared to deal with forces larger than yourself.

Bright was the light of my last martini on my moral horizon.

Either the century was entrenching itself more deeply into the absurd, or the absurd was delivering evidence that it was possessed of some of the nutritive mysteries of a marrow which would yet feed the armies of the absurd.

If punishment is at all proportionate to the offense, then power becomes watered. The only way you generate the proper attitude of awe and obedience is through immense and disproportionate power.

Sex is not only a divine and beautiful activity; it’s a murderous activity. People kill each other in bed. Some of the greatest crimes ever committed were committed in bed. And no weapons were used.

Sometimes I think our future existence will depend on whether we can keep false information from proliferating too rapidly. If our power to verify the facts does not keep pace, then distortions of information will eventually choke us.

When a novel comes, it’s a grace. Something in the cosmos has forgiven you long enough so that you can start.

She was a good girl, he said to himself. He was thinking without quite phrasing it that no other person had ever understood him so fully, and he felt a secret relief as he realized that she had understood him and still loved him.

I don’t read other writers because I’m writing all the time. It’s too disturbing to read a writer with a good style when you’re in the middle of putting your work together.