I do believe that America's deepest political sickness is that it is a self-righteous nation.

Movies are more likely than literature to reach deep feelings in people.

So you come soon to power, but you have merely inherited the crisis and yours is the profit of cancer.

Chicago was a town where nobody could forget how the money was made. It was picked up from floors still slippery with blood.

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

I become an actor, a quick-change artist, as if I can trap the Prince of Truth in the act of switching a style.

You can indulge your righteous rage but the things it comes out of are pretty cheap. The trick is to make yourself an instrument of your own policy. Whether you like it or not, that's the highest effectiveness man has achieved.