436 Quotes by Norman Mailer

Characters in novels sometimes radiate more energy, therefore, when we don’t enter their mind. It is one of the techniques a novelist acquires instinctively – don’t go into your protagonist’s thoughts until you have something to say about his or her inner life that is more interesting than the reader’s suppositions.

When an officer of the law detects a vice in himself, he knows enough to start looking for its presence in others.

The only faithfulness people have is to emotions they’re trying to recapture.

I do believe that America’s deepest political sickness is that it is a self-righteous nation.

I can’t get excited about politics, but I love it as a game. Because what I love in politics – this is very selfish of me, but who cares – what I do love in politics is this ability it has to make you think in new ways.

Every moment of one’s existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.

A democracy depends upon people getting brighter all the time. Democracies are delicate. They’re not just ipso facto and just go on and on.

I know everything about love but Love itself.

He does see Himself as the Divine Artist. Of course, He is also a blunderer – so many of His creations are botched. A good many are disasters which He then proceeds to plow back into the food chain. That is His only means of keeping His multitudinous, mediocre, and often meaningless spawnings from choking the existence of the rest. Yet, I will admit, He is dogged. He is still looking to improve His previous creations.