Simple narcissism gives the power of beasts to politicians, professional wrestlers and female movie stars.
Norman MailerTo know what you want to say is not the best condition for writing a novel. Novels go happiest when you discover something you did not know you knew: an insight into one of your opaque characters, a metaphor that startles you... a truth... that used to elude you.
Norman MailerThe writer can grow as a person or he can shrink. ... His curiosity, his reaction to life must not diminish. The fatal thing is to shrink, to be interested in less, sympathetic to less, desiccating to the point where life itself loses its flavor, and oneโs passion for human understanding changes to weariness and distaste.
Norman MailerChicago was a town where nobody could forget how the money was made. It was picked up from floors still slippery with blood.
Norman MailerThe art of the novel is to arrive at that artless point where your characters become more real than yourself.
Norman MailerI had the idea that there were two worlds. There was a real world as I called it, a world of wars and boxing clubs and children'shomes on back streets, and this real world was a world where orphans burned orphans.... I liked the other world in which almost everyone lived. The imaginary world.
Norman Mailer