Quotes By Norman Mailer

The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.

The highest prize in a world of men is the most beautiful woman available on your arm and living there in her heart loyal to you.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

It's not a good idea to put your wife into a novel; not your latest wife anyway.

If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist.

I had a quick grasp of the secret to sanity, it had become the ability to hold the maximum of impossible combinations in one's mind.

I hate everything which is not in myself.

It's not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.

Culture's worth huge, huge risks. Without culture we're all totalitarian beasts.

In America all too few blows are struck into flesh. We kill the spirit here, we are experts at that. We use psychic bullets and kill each other cell by cell.

Each day a few more lies eat into the seed with which we are born, little institutional lies from the print of newspapers, the shock waves of television, and the sentimental cheats of the movie screen.

Growth, in some curious way, I suspect, depends on being always in motion just a little bit, one way or another.

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.