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.

- Norman Mailer

I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.

- Norman Mailer

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

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

- Norman Mailer

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

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

- Norman Mailer

I don't think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for.

- Norman Mailer

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

- Norman Mailer

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

- Norman Mailer

With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance.

- Norman Mailer

If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist.

- Norman Mailer

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.

- Norman Mailer

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

- Norman Mailer

Obsession is the single most wasteful human activity, because with an obsession you keep coming back and back and back to the same question and never get an answer.

- Norman Mailer

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.

- Norman Mailer

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

Hip is the sophistication of the wise primitive in a giant jungle.

- Norman Mailer

Masculinity is not something given to you, but something you gain. And you gain it by winning small battles with honor.

- Norman Mailer

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

- Norman Mailer

I'm hostile to men, I'm hostile to women, I'm hostile to cats, to poor cockroaches, I'm afraid of horses.

- Norman Mailer