Norman Mailer

Every time I move I squash something said Loathesome.

I tell you, say the rich,the poor are naughtbut dirty windwelling in air-shaftsover the cindersand droppings ofthe past, theirvoices thickwith greaseand ordure,sewer-greedto corrode the earwith the horrorsof the pastand the voidsof new stupidity.One could drownwaiting for the poorto makeone fine distinction.Yes, destroy ussay the richand you losethe rootsof God.

I wonder, said the Lord I wonder if I know the answer any more.

I don__ trust compliments. I__e been getting them for years. Sometimes I deserve them, sometimes I didn__. But generally when people give you compliments there__ one of two things wrong with them. Either they__e false, or what__ worse is they__e sincere. They really mean the compliment. And then they__e offering you their loyalty. And I__ kind of a stingy_ Well, I don__ necessarily want to give all that loyalty back. So either way, let__ skip the compliments.

I met Jack Kennedy in November, 1946. We were both war heroes, and both of us had just been elected to Congress.

Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. The more a man can achieve, the more he may be certain that the devil will inhabit a part of his creation.

We are all so guilty at the way we have allowed the world around us to become more ugly and tasteless every year that we surrender to terror and steep ourselves in it.

Faction is that hybrid of documented fact and novelistic elaboration.

I won't stay inwith married menany moresaid the wise girlthey're too agreeable,it's a little too muchlike curlingupwith the good book.You meanagood bookOh, dear,did I saythegood booksighed the witch.

I heard from clear across the city, over the Hudson in the Jersey yards, one fierce whistle of a locomotive which took me to a train late at night hurling through the middle of the West, its iron shriek blighting the darkness. One hundred years before, some first trains had torn through the prairie and their warning had congealed the nerve. "Beware," said the sound. "Freeze in your route. Behind this machine comes a century of maniacs and a heat which looks to consume the earth." What a rustling those first animals must have known.

The only faithfulness people have is to emotions they're trying to recapture

Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.

You don't know a woman until you've met her in court.

Writer__ block is only a failure of the ego.

No, but why is Croft that way? Oh there are The Answers. He is that way because of the-corruption-of-the-society. He is that way because he is having problems of adjustment. It is because he is a Texan. It is because he has renounced God. He is that way because he was born that way, or because the Devil has claimed him for one of his own, or because the only woman he ever loved was untrue to him.

Yank! Yank! We you come to get Yank. We you come to get.

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.

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