Norman Mailer Quotes

• What characterizes a member of a minority group is that he is forced to see himself as both exceptional and insignificant, marvelous and awful, good and evil.

  Norman Mailer

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Group, Characterize

• 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.

  Norman Mailer

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Psychic, Bullet

• Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

  Norman Mailer

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Book

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

  Norman Mailer

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Culture, Beast

• We can never know for certain where our prayers are likely to go, nor from whom the answers will come. Just when we think we are at our nearest to God, we could be assisting the Devil.

  Norman Mailer

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Come, Answer

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

  Norman Mailer

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Little, Depends

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

  Norman Mailer

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Sentiments, Action

• Alimony is the curse of the writing class.

  Norman Mailer

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Alimony, Curse

• The Irish are the only men who know how to cry for the dirty polluted blood of all the world.

  Norman Mailer

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Dirty, Cry

• You don’t know a woman until you have met her in court.

  Norman Mailer

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Women, Court, Met

• 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.

  Norman Mailer

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Retreating, Little

• There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same., so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.

  Norman Mailer

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Law And Lawyers

• There are four stages in a marriage. First there’s the affair, then the marriage, then children and finally the fourth stage, without which you cannot know a woman, the divorce.

  Norman Mailer

  Topics in Success

  Tags in Marriage

• Chicago was a town where nobody could forget how the money was made. It was picked up from floors still slippery with blood.

  Norman Mailer

  Topics in Money

  Tags in Chicago, Forget

• Tough guys don’t dance. You had better believe it.

  Norman Mailer

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Better, Believe

• In America few people will trust you unless you are irreverent.

  Norman Mailer

  Topics in America, Trust

  Tags in Irreverent, Unless

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

  Norman Mailer

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Exacerbate, Purpose

• A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

  Norman Mailer

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Stopped, Tyranny

• I hate everything which is not in myself.

  Norman Mailer

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Hate, Myself

• God like Us suffers the ambition to make a destiny more extraordinary than was conceived for Him, yes God is like Me, only more so.

  Norman Mailer

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Him, Extraordinary

Norman Mailer (68)

Birth:	31st January, 1923
Death:	10th November, 2007
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Actor, Filmmaker, Novelist, Playwriter

Related Authors

• Vincent Schiavelli
• Emmanuel Lewis
• Richard Grant
• Jerry Stiller
• George Carlin
• Donald Wolfit
• David Ginola
• Joseph Bologna
• Garrett Morris
• Timothy Hutton

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 8th April

Births

• 1732 - David Rittenhouse
• 1947 - Robert Kiyosaki
• 1937 - Seymour Hersh
• 1961 - Richard Hatch
• 1963 - Terry Porter

Deaths

• 1885 - Susanna Moodie
• 1586 - Martin Chemnitz
• 1835 - Wilhelm von Humboldt
• 1997 - Laura Nyro
• 1990 - Ryan White