A Quote by Norman Mailer

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. — © Norman Mailer
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.
By the time the Egyptian civilization had begun to flourish, the earth's aura had already become so dense it was impossible to discover the secret meditation techniques.
In all activities of life, the secret of efficiency lies in an ability to combine two seemingly incompatible states: a state of maximum activity and a state of maximum relaxation.
If you see a wonderful archaic Greek marble object in a museum, it's not only that it's beautiful, but what comes to your mind is the fact that it's 2,600 or so years old, and it was done by a human being at that time who you have such a limited ability to grasp - and yet you have this enormous ability to grasp.
My grandmother had the most dramatic effect on my life because she set me in one direction, and I had to go back the other direction for my sanity, and for my ability to be a social human being.
To become a villain, you had to have become disillusioned, and in order to become disillusioned you had to have been passionate about something you believed in that was shaken and ripped from your grasp as a protagonist in that stage of your life, leaving you disillusioned with God, if you will.
When I returned, everything was different. Everything was calm, and I felt very clean. Everything was in order. Everything was as it should be. I had a secret. It was a guilty secret, certainly. But it was MY secret. I had something to hold on to. It was company. It kept me calm. It filled me up and emptied me out.
I have never had a secret hero in my mind but I have kept a lot of mentors in my mind that are heroes. Gandhi, Jesus, Moses, Martin Luther King they were all secret heroes in my mind because they stood for what they wanted, what they believed in.
Everyone has complexes about their body or their ability and skills and dream of a rebirth into something different. I myself have always had that secret desire to become something completely different and enact revenge on certain things. So I do that through my movies. My desires become reality in the movie because it can't become real in real life.
Bill Clinton was effective because he had that personal relationship, that this was a guy who had tremendous curiosity, which is another one of the key attributes. And he had the ability - his mind was - his mind and his heart were very well-connected. And so he genuinely empathized.
I had huge fun with Chris Evans, as Captain America, because super-soldier though he may be, he's still a man, up against a God who in his own mind is infinitely superior. Then, in the ring with The Hulk, we've got this silver tongued, lightening quick mind up against the embodiment of rage..Loki has this mercurial, transformative ability, not just physically but intellectually, so not all the fights are purely physical. Mind games? Maybe.
...the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the "impossible," come true.
I was generally busy from 7 A.M. until midnight. I never had time to sit and think. As I worked, physical and mental fatigue set in and I was unable to operate to the maximum of my intellectual ability. But in a single cell in prison, I had time to think. I had a clear view of my past and present, and I found that my past left much to be desired, both in regard to my relations with other humans and in developing personal worth.
It's my belief that sanity lies in realizing that reality is not exactly what we had in mind.
"Lights," I said softly. This had become my favorite word over the past week. In my mind, it had become synonymous with freedom.
One might talk about the sanity of the atom the sanity of space the sanity of the electron the sanity of water- For it is all alive and has something comparable to that which we call sanity in ourselves. The only oneness is the oneness of sanity.
The general verdict among the German generals I interrogated in 1945 was that Field-Marshal von Manstein had proved the ablest commander in their Army, and the man they had most desired to become its Commander-in-Chief. It is very clear that he had a superb sense of operational possibilities and equal mastery in the conduct of operations, together with a greater grasp of the potentialities of mechanized forces than any other commander who had not been trained in the tank arm. In sum, he had military genius.
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