Norman Mailer in his writings is ultimately more concerned with success than with danger; danger is only a means to success.

Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism -- victimless collecting, as it were... in a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage. The course of modern history having already sapped the traditions and shattered the living wholes in which precious objects once found their place, the collector may now in good conscience go about excavating the choicer, more emblematic fragments.

Pornography is one of the branches of literature - science fiction is another - aiming at disorientation, at psychic dislocation.

Self-respect. It would make me lovable. And it's the secret to good sex.

It hurts to love. It's like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.

I'm extremely interested in the Russian formalists and have been for many years. I'm more drawn to their writing, which is expressive and literary, than to writing which is extremely academic or jargon-ridden.

It is easier to endure than to change. But once one has changed, what was endured is hard to recall.