Top 255 Quotes & Sayings by Norman Mailer - Page 5

You have the right to speak your mind.

Love was love, one could find it with anyone, one could find it anywhere. It was just that you could never keep it. Not unless you were ready to die for it.

I really gave up being passionate about politics 10, 15, 20 years ago, because I think finally that there were forces in the country that are larger than politics itself. And so I find it a fascinating game, this wonderful stuff goes on in terms of watching the game. But If you get to down it, look, I`m going to root for someone, I`ll root at a football game, not for politicians.

I am convinced the most unfortunate people are those who would make an art of love. It sours other effort. Of all artists, they are certainly the most wretched.

Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union by increasing armaments.

On a late-winter evening in 1983, while driving through fog along the Maine coast, recollections of old campfires began to drift into the March mist, and I thought of the Abnaki Indians of the Algonquin tribe who dwelt near Bangor a thousand years ago.

The condition that is most disagreeable in your life becomes the most useful one. You know, I feel the same way about the U.S. Army. It was absolutely the worst experience of my life, and it was probably the single most valuable experience.

Is one human? Or merely alive? Like a blade of grass equal to all existance in the moment it is torn? Yes. If pain is fundament, then a blade of grass can know all there is.

There`s a tendency for Americans, particularly the simpler you are, the more you believe in the president as the kind of person to be.

The great power in America is the corporations - we`re a corporate country. We`re run by a CEO and the stockholders have very little to say on how the corporation is run. Fine, the board of directors run it and the stockholders can just be disgruntled, but who gives a damn?

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

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.

Faction is that hybrid of documented fact and novelistic elaboration.

God is a creator, not a law giver.

I met Jack Kennedy in November, 1946... We went out on a double date and it turned out to be a fair evening for me. I seduced a girl who would have been bored by a diamond as big as the Ritz.