A political convention is after all not a meeting of a corporation's board of directors; it is a fiesta, a carnival, a pig-rooting, horse-snorting, band-playing, voice-screaming medieval get-together of greed, practical lust, compromised idealism, career-advancement, meeting, feud, vendetta, conciliation, of rabble-rousers, fist fights (as it used to be), embraces, drunks (again as it used to be) and collective rivers of animal sweat.

There is no greater impotence in all the world like knowing you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave crashes upon you.

Culture is worth a little risk.

What's the use of being a writer if you can't irritate a great many people?

We have an absolute right in a democracy to argue about a war.

Mailer's Law: A thing either gets better or it costs more to run it the way it was.

You can't be a serious writer of fiction unless you believe the story you are telling.