Norman Mailer
Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.
Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe, Mailer is considered an innovator of creative nonfiction, a genre sometimes called New Journalism, but which covers the essay to the nonfiction novel. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize twice and the National Book Award once. In 1955, Mailer, together with Ed Fancher and Dan Wolf, first published The Village Voice, which began as an arts- and politics-oriented weekly newspaper initially distributed in Greenwich Village. In 2005, he won the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from The National Book Foundation.
“Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment.”
Norman Mailer
“Great hope has no real footing unless one is willing to face into the doom that may also be on the way.p.207”
Norman Mailer
“Bright was the light of my last martini on my moral horizon”
Norman Mailer
“The mark of mediocrity is to look for precedent.”
Norman Mailer
“On the other hand, I am not a liberal. The notion that man is a rational creature who arrives at reasonable solutions to knotty problems is much in doubt as far as I’m concerned. Liberalism depends all too much on having an optimistic view of human nature. But the history of the 20th century has not exactly fortified that notion. Moreover, liberalism also depends too much upon reason rather than any appreciation of mystery. If you start to talk about God with the average good liberal, he looks at you as if you are more than a little off. In that sense, since I happen to be—I hate to use the word religious, there are so many heavy dull connotations, so many pious self-seeking aspects—but I do believe there is a Creator who is active in human affairs and is endangered. I also believe there is a Devil who is equally active in our existence (and is all too often successful). So, I can hardly be a liberal. God is bad enough for them, but talk about the devil, and the liberal’s mind is blown. He is consorting with a fellow who is irrational if not insane. That is the end of real conversation.”
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.”
Norman Mailer
“Writer’s block is only a failure of the ego.”
Norman Mailer
“I am not here only so that the blind might see, but to teach those who thought they could see that they are blind”
Norman Mailer
“Harsh words live in the dungeon of the heart”
Norman Mailer
“The only faithfulness people have is to emotions they're trying to recapture”
Norman Mailer
“There is a no man's land between sex and love, and it alters in the night.”
Norman Mailer