The sole virtue of losing your short-term memory is that it does free you to be your own editor.
Norman MailerPeople move forward into the future out of the way they comprehend the past. When we don't understand something in our past, we are therefore crippled.
Norman MailerThere is one expanding horror in American life. It is that our long odyssey toward liberty, democracy and freedom-for-all may be achieved in such a way that utopia remains forever closed, and we live in freedom and hell, debased of style, not individual from one another, void of courage, our fear rationalized away.
Norman MailerAmerica has an almost obscene infatuation with itself. Has there ever been a big, powerful country that is as patriotic as America? And patriotic in the tinniest way, with so much flag waving? You'd really think we were some poor little republic, and that if one person lost his religion for one hour, the whole thing would crumble. America is the real religion in this country.
Norman Mailer