Norman Mailer citáty

— Norman Mailer
Context: 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. Preface

Reklama

„America is a nation of experts without roots; we are always creating tacticians who are blind to strategy and strategists who cannot take a step“

— Norman Mailer
Context: America is a nation of experts without roots; we are always creating tacticians who are blind to strategy and strategists who cannot take a step, and when the culture has finished its work the institutions handcuff the infirmity.

„Americans have been leading a double life, and our history has moved on two rivers, one visible, the other underground;“

— Norman Mailer
Context: Americans have been leading a double life, and our history has moved on two rivers, one visible, the other underground; there has been the history of politics which is concrete, factual, practical and unbelievably dull if not for the consequences of the actions of some of these men; and there is a subterranean river of untapped, ferocious, lonely and romantic desires, that concentration of ecstasy and violence which is the dream life of the nation.

„I had a great many prejudices that have since dissolved.“

— Norman Mailer
Context: I had a great many prejudices that have since dissolved. But what I still hate about the women's movement is their insistence upon male piety in relation to it. I don't like bending my knee and saying I'm sorry, mea culpa. I find now that women have achieved some power and recognition they are quite the equal of men in every stupidity and vice and misjudgment that we've exercised through history. They're narrow-minded, power seeking, incapable of recognizing the joys of a good discussion. The women's movement is filled with tyrants, just as men's political movements are equally filled. What I've come to discover are the negative sides, that women are no better than men. I used to think — this is sexism in a way, I'll grant it — that women were better than men. Now I realize no, they're not any better.

„We live in a time which has created the art of the absurd. It is our art.“

— Norman Mailer
Context: We live in a time which has created the art of the absurd. It is our art. It contains happenings, Pop art, camp, a theater of the absurd … Do we have the art because the absurd is the patina of waste…? Or are we face to face with a desperate or most rational effort from the deepest resources of the unconscious of us all to rescue civilization from the pit and plague of its bedding? Introducing our Argument

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„A hero can capture the secret imagination of a people, and so be good for the vitality of his nation;“

— Norman Mailer
Context: A hero can capture the secret imagination of a people, and so be good for the vitality of his nation; a hero embodies the fantasy and so allows each private mind the liberty to consider its fantasy and find a way to grow. Each mind can become more conscious of its desire and waste less strength in hiding from itself.

„The world's not what I want it to be. But then no one ever said I had the right to design the world.“

— Norman Mailer
Context: It's a misperception of me that I am a wild man — I wish I still were. I'm 68 years old. The rage now is, oh, so deep it's almost comfortable. It has even approached the point where I can live with it philosophically. The world's not what I want it to be. But then no one ever said I had the right to design the world.

„You're a fool if you don't realize this is going to be the reactionary's century, perhaps their thousand-year reign.“

— Norman Mailer
Context: You're a fool if you don't realize this is going to be the reactionary's century, perhaps their thousand-year reign. It's the one thing Hitler said which wasn't completely hysterical. Gen. Edward Cummings, in Pt. 1, Ch. 3

„We sail across dominions barely seen, washed by the swells of time.“

— Norman Mailer
Context: We sail across dominions barely seen, washed by the swells of time. We plow through fields of magnetism. Past and future come together on thunderheads and our dead hearts live with lightning in the wounds of the Gods. Ancient Evenings (1983) Last lines