In every society, the definitions of sanity and madness are arbitrary - are, in the largest sense, political.

Cinema is a kind of pan-art. It can use, incorporate, engulf virtually any other art: the novel, poetry, theater, painting, sculpture, dance, music, architecture. Unlike opera, which is a (virtually) frozen art form, the cinema is and has been a fruitfully conservative medium of ideas and styles of emotions.

The only story that seems worth writing is a cry, a shot, a scream. A story should break the reader's heart.

I love to read the way people love to watch television.

In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself.

People don't become inured to what they are shown - if that's the right way to describe what happens - because of the quantity of images dumped on them. It is passivity that dulls feeling. The states described as apathy, moral or emotional anesthesia, are full of feelings; the feelings are rage and frustration.

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