Norman Mailer Quotes (67 Quotes)

'Growth is a greater mystery than death. All of us can understand failure, we all contain failure and death within us, but not even the successful man can begin to describe the impalpable elations and apprehensions of growth.'

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.

Alimony is the curse of the writing class.

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

The difference between writing a book and being on television is the difference between conceiving a child and having a baby made in a test tube.

There was no one ever in American life who was remotely like Truman Capote. Small wonder, then, if people are still fascinated by him.

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.

There is nothing safe about sex. There never will be.

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

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.

Tough guys don't dance. You had better believe it.

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

Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment.

I usually need a can of beer to prime me.

Short-term amnesia is not the worst affliction if you have an Irish flair for the sauce.

To be a mainstream American is to live as an oxymoron. You are a good Christian, but you strain to remain dynamically competitive.

He got a corporation mind. He don't believe in nature he puts his trust and distrust in man.