Norman Mailer Quotes

“But the young educated adults of the 90s -- who were, of course, the children of the same impassioned infidelities and divorces Mr. Updike wrote about so
beautifully -- got to watch all this brave new individualism and self-expression and sexual freedom deteriorate into the joyless and anomic self-indulgence of the Me Generation. Today's sub-40s have different horrors, prominent among which are anomie and solipsism and a peculiarly American loneliness: the prospect of dying without once having loved something more than yourself.”
― David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster and Other Essays

“At this stage of the game, I don’t have the time for patience and tolerance. Ten years ago, even five years ago, I would have listened to people ask their questions, explained to them, mollified them. No more. That time is past. Now, as Norman Mailer said in Naked and the Dead, ‘I hate everything which is not in myself.’ If it doesn’t have a direct bearing on what I’m advocating, if it doesn’t augment or stimulate my life and thinking, I don’t want to hear it. It has to add something to my life. There’s no more time for explaining and being ecumenical anymore. No more time. That’s a characteristic I share with the new generation of Satanists, which might best be termed, and has labeled itself in many ways, an ‘Apocalypse culture.’ Not that they believe in the biblical Apocalypse—the ultimate war between good and evil. Quite the contrary. But that there is an urgency, a need to get on with things and stop wailing and if it ends tomorrow, at least we’ll know we’ve lived today. It’s a ‘fiddle while Rome burns’ philosophy. It’s the Satanic philosophy. If the generation born in the 50’s grew up in the shadow of The Bomb and had to assimilate the possibility of imminent self destruction of the entire planet at any time, those born in the 60’s have had to reconcile the inevitability of our own destruction, not through the bomb but through mindless, uncontrolled overpopulation. And somehow resolve in themselves, looking at what history has taught us, that no amount of yelling, protesting, placard waving, marching, wailing—or even more constructive avenues like running for government office or trying to write books to wake people up—is going to do a damn bit of good. The majority of humans have an inborn death wish—they want to destroy themselves and everything beautiful. To finally realize that we’re living in a world after the zenith of creativity, and that we can see so clearly the mechanics of our own destruction, is a terrible realization. Most people can’t face it. They’d rather retreat to the comfort of New Age mysticism. That’s all right. All we want, those few of us who have the strength to realize what’s going on, is the freedom to create and entertain and share with each other, to preserve and cherish what we can while we can, and to build our own little citadels away from the insensitivity of the rest of the world.”
― Anton Szandor LaVey, The Secret Life of a Satanist: The Authorized Biography of Anton LaVey

“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

“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.”
― Norman Mailer, An American Dream

“It comes as no surprise to find [Norman] Mailer embracing [in the book On God] a form of Manicheanism, pitting the forces of light and darkness against each other in a permanent stand-off, with humanity as the battlefield. (When asked if Jesus is part of this battle, he responds rather loftily that he thinks it is a distinct possibility.) But it is at points like this that he talks as if all the late-night undergraduate talk sessions on the question of theism had become rolled into one. 'How can we not face up to the fact that if God is All-Powerful, He cannot be All-Good. Or She cannot be All-Good.'

Mailer says that questions such as this have bedevilled 'theologians', whereas it would be more accurate to say that such questions, posed by philosophers, have attempted to put theologians out of business. A long exchange on the probability of reincarnation (known to Mailer sometimes as “karmic reassignment”) manages to fall slightly below the level of those undergraduate talk sessions. The Manichean stand-off leads Mailer, in closing, to speculate on what God might desire politically and to say: 'In different times, the heavens may have been partial to monarchy, to communism, and certainly the Lord was interested in democracy, in capitalism. (As was the Devil!)'

I think it was at this point that I decided I would rather remember Mailer as the author of Harlot's Ghost and The Armies of the Night.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“If I’d found out that Norman Mailer liked me, I’d have killed myself. I think he was too hung up. I’m glad Kurt Vonnegut didn’t like me either. He had problems, terrible problems. He couldn’t see the world the way I see it. I suppose I’m too much Pollyanna, he was too much Cassandra. Actually I prefer to see myself as the Janus, the two-faced god who is half Pollyanna and half Cassandra, warning of the future and perhaps living too much in the past—a combination of both. But I don’t think I’m too over optimistic.”
― Ray Bradbury

“Flannery O'Connor had a certain genius. I don't think John Updike has, or Norman Mailer or William Styron, all of whom are talented, but they don't exceed themselves in any way. Norman Mailer thinks William Burroughs is a genius, which I think is ludicrous beyond words. I don't think William Burroughs has an ounce of talent.”
― Truman Capote, Conversations with Capote

“Who but the sports-mad [Norman] Mailer would liken the battle between God and the Devil to a game of American football? The contest, for sure, has with [sic] own laws (so that after God and the Devil 'tackle a guy, they don't kick him in the head'), but each side is not above cheating—with God breaking the rules occasionally by throwing in 'a miracle'. Strangely, Mailer doesn’t mention Jesus in this agonising analogy, but then the notion of the 'super-sub' may be an image too far even for him.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“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.”
― Norman Mailer, An American Dream

“En muchos vecindarios, sin embargo, las calles son pacíficas y fantasmales. La otra parte del
mundo podrá avanzar vertiginosamente, pero no en una pobre manzana de casuchas destartaladas
donde el único vehículo que se ve es un viejo Chevrolet color oliva pardusco, con brillantes
manchones amarillos y naranjas. Es tanto el silencio, que me siento como si se estuviera en un
275 Norman Mailer El fantasma de Harlot
bosque. No muy lejos hay un muchacho con un suéter amarillo, del mismo tono de los manchones
amarillos del viejo coche oliva pardusco. Otro automóvil viejo, en otra calle vieja, está alzado sobre
un gato por la parte delantera, con el capó tan abierto que parece un pato graznando. Lo han pintado
de un azul sucio, brillante. En un viejo balcón han puesto ropa a secar. Te aseguro, Kittredge, que
una de las camisas tiene el mismo tono azul sucio del coche.
Creo que cuando un país permanece protegido de las tormentas de la historia, los fenómenos
más pequeños adquieren prominencia. En una pradera de Maine, protegida de los vientos, las flores
silvestres surgen en los lugares más extraños, como si su único propósito fuera deleitar los ojos.
Aquí, a todo lo largo de un edificio bajo, común y corriente, del siglo XIX, veo una paleta continua
de piedra y estuco: marrón y marrón grisáceo, aguamarina, gris oliva y mandarina. Luego, lavanda.
Tres piedras fundamentales, en tonos rosados. Así como los coches reflejan los sedimentos de
antiguas latas de pintura, bajo el omnipresente hollín ciudadano está este otro despliegue más sutil.
Empiezo a sospechar que esta gente mira sus calles con un ojo interior; si han pintado un letrero de
verde musgo, entonces allí, en el extremo de la calle, alguien decide pintar una puerta con el mismo
tono de verde. El tiempo y la suciedad, la humedad y el yeso descascarillado contribuyen a dar
colorido a la vista. Las viejas puertas empalidecen hasta que ya no es posible determinar si el
original era azul o verde o de algún misterioso tono de gris que reflejaba la luz del follaje de la
primavera. Recuerda que aquí, en el hemisferio Sur, octubre es como nuestro abril.
En la Ciudad Vieja, en una calle que baja hasta el borde del agua, la playa, gris como la arcilla,
está desierta. Al fondo, se ve una plaza vacía con una columna solitaria que se recorta contra el mar.
¿Podrán haber seleccionado el lugar para demostrar que De Chirico sabe pintar? En estos paisaje
desolados, a menudo se ve una figura solitaria vestida de luto”
― Ezequiel De Rosso, Relatos de Montevideo

“(Fragmento de El fantasma de Harlot(una historia novelada de la CIA), Norman Mailer ,1991)

En muchos vecindarios, sin embargo, las calles son pacíficas y fantasmales. La otra parte del
mundo podrá avanzar vertiginosamente, pero no en una pobre manzana de casuchas destartaladas
donde el único vehículo que se ve es un viejo Chevrolet color oliva pardusco, con brillantes
manchones amarillos y naranjas. Es tanto el silencio, que me siento como si se estuviera en un bosque. No muy lejos hay un muchacho con un suéter amarillo, del mismo tono de los manchones
amarillos del viejo coche oliva pardusco. Otro automóvil viejo, en otra calle vieja, está alzado sobre
un gato por la parte delantera, con el capó tan abierto que parece un pato graznando. Lo han pintado
de un azul sucio, brillante. En un viejo balcón han puesto ropa a secar. Te aseguro, Kittredge, que
una de las camisas tiene el mismo tono azul sucio del coche.
Creo que cuando un país permanece protegido de las tormentas de la historia, los fenómenos
más pequeños adquieren prominencia. En una pradera de Maine, protegida de los vientos, las flores
silvestres surgen en los lugares más extraños, como si su único propósito fuera deleitar los ojos.
Aquí, a todo lo largo de un edificio bajo, común y corriente, del siglo XIX, veo una paleta continua
de piedra y estuco: marrón y marrón grisáceo, aguamarina, gris oliva y mandarina. Luego, lavanda.
Tres piedras fundamentales, en tonos rosados. Así como los coches reflejan los sedimentos de
antiguas latas de pintura, bajo el omnipresente hollín ciudadano está este otro despliegue más sutil.
Empiezo a sospechar que esta gente mira sus calles con un ojo interior; si han pintado un letrero de
verde musgo, entonces allí, en el extremo de la calle, alguien decide pintar una puerta con el mismo
tono de verde. El tiempo y la suciedad, la humedad y el yeso descascarillado contribuyen a dar
colorido a la vista. Las viejas puertas empalidecen hasta que ya no es posible determinar si el
original era azul o verde o de algún misterioso tono de gris que reflejaba la luz del follaje de la
primavera. Recuerda que aquí, en el hemisferio Sur, octubre es como nuestro abril.
En la Ciudad Vieja, en una calle que baja hasta el borde del agua, la playa, gris como la arcilla,
está desierta. Al fondo, se ve una plaza vacía con una columna solitaria que se recorta contra el mar.
¿Podrán haber seleccionado el lugar para demostrar que De Chirico sabe pintar? En estos paisaje
desolados, a menudo se ve una figura solitaria vestida de luto”
― ezequiel de rosso

“Aukeman quotes Norman Mailer:
"No wonder then that these have been the years of conformity and depression. A stench of fear has come out of every pore of American life and we suffer from a collective failure or nerve. The only courage, with rare exceptions, that we have been witness to, has been the isolated courage of isolated people." Welcome to Painterland (2016) Chapter 4, p.108”
― Anastasia Aukeman, Welcome to Painterland: Bruce Conner and the Rat Bastard Protective Association