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America 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

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America Has An Almost

Norman Mailer

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America 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.

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I Was Now At A University In New York, A Professor Of Existential Psychology With The Not Inconsiderable Thesis That Magic, Dread, And The Perception Of Death Were The Roots Of Motivation.

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There's A Subterranean Impetus Towards Pornography So Powerful That Half The Business World Is Juiced By The Sort Of Half Sex That One Finds In Advertisements.

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Over The Years, I've Found One Rule. It Is The Only One I Give On Those Occasions When I Talk About Writing. A Simple Rule. If You Tell Yourself You Are Going To Be At Your Desk Tomorrow, You Are By That Declaration Asking Your Unconscious To Prepare The Material. You Are, In Effect, Contracting To Pick Up Such Valuables At A Given Time. Count On Me, You Are Saying To A Few Forces Below: I Will Be There To Write.

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So The Blind Will Lead The Blind, And The Deaf Shout Warnings To One Another Until Their Voices Are Lost.

Crude Thoughts And Fierce Forces Are My State. I Do Not Know Who I Am. Nor What I Was. I Cannot Hear A Sound. Pain Is Near That Will Be Like No Pain Felt Before.

The Sole Virtue Of Losing Your Short-term Memory Is That It Does Free You To Be Your Own Editor.

Part Of The Oncoming Demise (of New York During Its Terrible Fiscal Crisis) Is That None Of Us Can Simply Believe It. We Were Always The Best And The Strongest Of Cities, And Our People Were Vital To The Teeth. Knock Them Down Eight Times And They Would Get Up With That Look In The Eye Which Suggests The Fight Has Barely Begun.

Writing Can Wreck Your Body. You Sit There On The Chair Hour After Hour And Sweat Your Guts Out To Get A Few Words.

The Function Of Socialism Is To Raise Suffering To A Higher Level.

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When The Wind Carries A Cry Which Is Meaningful To Human Ears, It Is Simpler To Believe The Wind Shares With Us Some Part Of The Emotion Of Being Than That The Mysteries Of A Hurricane's Rising Murmur Reduce To No More Than The Random Collision Of Insensate Molecules.

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It's Not The Sentiments Of Men Which Make History But Their Actions.

I Always Start A Book For Money. If You're Married Five Times You Have To.

Love Asks Us That We Be A Little Braver Than Is Comfortable, A Little More Generous, A Little More Flexible. It Means Living On The Edge More Than We Care To.

It All Comes Down To Who Does The Dishes.

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The Frenchman Jean-paulsartre ... Had A Dialectical Mind Good As A Machine For Cybernetics, Immense In Its Way, He Could Peel A Nuance Like An Onion, But He Had No Sense Of Evil, The Anguish Of God, And The Possible Existence Of Satan.

Like All Men Who Are Napoleonic In Their Ambitionshe Has Instincts About The Nature Of Growth, A Lover's Sense Of The Momentof Crisis, And He Knewhow Costly Is Defeat When It Is Not Soothed By Greater Consciousness, And How Wasteful Is The Profit Of Victory When There Is Not The Courage To Employ It.

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I Hate Everything Which Is Not In Myself.

The World's Not What I Want It To Be. But Then No One Ever Said I Had The Right To Design The World.

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You Can't Be A Serious Writer Of Fiction Unless You Believe The Story You Are Telling.

Reagan Bankrupted The Soviet Union By Increasing Armaments.

Los Angeles Is A Constellation Of Plastic.

If A Person Is Not Talented Enough To Be A Novelist, Not Smart Enough To Be A Lawyer, And His Hands Are Too Shaky To Perform Operations, He Becomes A Journalist.

Writing For A Newspaper Is Like Running A Revolutionary War. You Go To Battle Not When You Are Ready, But When Action Offers Itself.

I've Made An Ass Of Myself So Many Times I Often Wonder If I Am One.

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Writing Books Is The Closest Men Ever Come To Childbearing.

Even An Evil Man Can Have Principleshe Can Be True To His Own Evil, Which Is Not Always So Easy.

I Don't Think Life Is Absurd. I Think We Are All Here For A Huge Purpose. I Think We Shrink From The Immensity Of The Purpose We Are Here For.

Comfortless Was My Religion, Anxiety Of The Anxieties, For I Believed God Was Not Love, But Courage. Love Came Only As A Reward.

Courage To Love

A Democracy Depends Upon People Getting Brighter All The Time. Democracies Are Delicate. They're Not Just Ipso Facto And Just Go On And On.

People Who Live Under Fascism Are Not Only Miserable But They're Full Of Shame. You Just Don't Go In And Inject Democracy Into Them. They're Half Crazy With Their Own.

Great Sex Is Apocalyptic. There Is No Such Thing As Great Sex Unless You Have An Apocalyptic Moment.

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The Paradox Is That No Love Can Prove So Intense As The Love Of Two Narcissists For Each Other.

At Bottom, I Mean Profoundly At Bottom, The Fbi Has Nothing To Do With Communism, It Has Nothing To Do With Catching Criminals, It Has Nothing To Do With The Mafia, The Syndicate, It Has Nothing To Do With Trust-busting, It Has Nothing To Do With Interstate Commerce, It Has Nothing To Do With Anything But Serving As A Church For The Mediocre. A High Church For The True Mediocre.

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Over-certified Adjectives Are The Mark Of Most Best-seller Writing

On A Late-winter Evening In 1983, While Driving Through Fog Along The Maine Coast, Recollections Of Old Campfires Began To Drift Into The March Mist, And I Thought Of The Abnaki Indians Of The Algonquin Tribe Who Dwelt Near Bangor A Thousand Years Ago.

Masculinity Is Not Something Given To You, But Something You Gain. And You Gain It By Winning Small Battles With Honor.

The Only Journey Of Knowledge Is From The Depth Of One Being To The Heart Of Another.

Any Workout Which Does Not Involve A Certain Minimum Of Danger Or Responsibility Does Not Improve The Body - It Just Wears It Out.

When You Know Too Much Information And You Acquire It Too Easily, You Tend To Either Use It In Disagreeable Ways, Out Of Vanity, Or You Tend To Be Indiscriminate About It. I Mean, In The Old Days, It Was Tricky, You Had To Go To Various Encyclopedias, You Had To Go To The Library, Maybe Spend A Day There, Whatever. But In The End, If You Found Something, It Was Really Exciting. Now You Hit A Couple Of Buttons And You Get Some Information. Which, By The Way, Is Almost Always Presented In That Same Goddamn Mediocre Style That Characterizes The Internet For Me. It Is Slightly Deadening.

Armstrong, Sitting In The Commander's Seat, Spacesuit On, Helmet On, Plugged Into Electrical And Environmental Umbilical's, Is A Man Who Is Not Only A Machine Himself In The Links Of These Networks, But Is Also A Man Sitting In (what Collins Is Later To Call) A 'mini-cathedral.' A Man Somewhat More Than A Pilot, Somewhat More Than A Superpilot, Is In Fact A Veritable High Priest Of The Forces Of Society And Scientific History Concentrated In That Mini Cathedral, A General Of The Church Of The Forces Of Technology.

I Don't Trust Compliments. I've Been Getting Them For Years. Sometimes I Deserve Them, Sometimes I Didn't. But Generally When People Give You Compliments There's One Of Two Things Wrong With Them. Either They're False, Or What's Worse Is They're Sincere. They Really Mean The Compliment. And Then They're Offering You Their Loyalty. And I'm Kind Of A Stingy... Well, I Don't Necessarily Want To Give All That Loyalty Back. So Either Way, Let's Skip The Compliments.

There Is A No Man's Land Between Sex And Love, And It Alters In The Night.

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We Didn't Win The Cold War, We Were Just A Big Bank That Bankrupted A Smaller Bank Because We Had An Arms Race That Wiped The Russians Out.

The Fact That We've Been A Great Democracy Doesn't Mean We Will Automatically Keep Being One If We Keep Waving The Flag.

I Think The Internet Is The Greatest Waste Of Time Since Masturbation Was Discovered.

Writers Don't Have Lifestyles. They Just Sit In Little Rooms And Write.

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.

One Thing I've Learned In All These Years Is Not To Make Love When You Really Don't Feel It; There's Probably Nothing Worse You Can Do To Yourself Than That.

Sex Is Not Only A Divine And Beautiful Activity; It's A Murderous Activity. People Kill Each Other In Bed. Some Of The Greatest Crimes Ever Committed Were Committed In Bed. And No Weapons Were Used.

We Live In A Time Which Has Created The Art Of The Absurd. It Is Our Art. It Contains Happenings, Pop Art, Camp, A Theater Of The Absurd... Do We Have The Art Because The Absurd Is The Patina Of Waste...? Or Are We Face To Face With A Desperate Or Most Rational Effort From The Deepest Resources Of The Unconscious Of Us All To Rescue Civilization From The Pit And Plague Of Its Bedding?

Everything Wrong With America Led To The Point Where The Country Built That Tower Of Babel, Which Consequently Had To Be Destroyed. And Then Came The Next Shock. We Had To Realize That The People That Did This Were Brilliant. It Showed That The Ego We Could Hold Up Until September 10 Was Inadequate.

Is One Human? Or Merely Alive? Like A Blade Of Grass Equal To All Existance In The Moment It Is Torn? Yes. If Pain Is Fundament, Then A Blade Of Grass Can Know All There Is.

Simple Narcissism Gives The Power Of Beasts To Politicians, Professional Wrestlers And Female Movie Stars.

Hip Is The Sophistication Of The Wise Primitive In A Giant Jungle.

I'm A Great Believer In The Hereafter, In Karma, In Reincarnation. It Does Make Sense. I Believe That God Is Not Just A Law-giver, But A Creative Artist. The Greatest Of All. And What Characterises Artists Is That They Want To Redo Their Work. Maybe It Didn't Come Off Perfectly, So They Want To See It Done Again, And Improved. Reincarnation Is A Way For God To Improve His Earlier Works.

Decade After Decade, Artists Came To Paint The Light Of Provincetown, And Comparisons Were Made To The Lagoons Of Venice And The Marshes Of Holland, But Then The Summer Ended And Most Of The Painters Left, And The Long Dingy Undergarment Of The Gray New England Winter, Gray As The Spirit Of My Mood, Came Down To Visit.

...never Have I Subscribed To The Doctrine Of Willful Rejection Of The World Or Its Visual Image. To The Non-objectivist This Act Of Impiety May Be Shockingly Impure, But God, I Have No Desire To Be Either Hollow Or Sterile.

For What Does It Mean To Be A Hero? It Requires You To Be Prepared To Deal With Forces Larger Than Yourself.

Goldstein, You'd Be A Pretty Good Boy If You Wasn't So Chicken.

Obsession Is The Single Most Wasteful Human Activity, Because With An Obsession You Keep Coming Back And Back And Back To The Same Question And Never Get An Answer.

Sentimentality Is The Emotional Promiscuity Of Those Who Have No Sentiment.

Being A Real Writer Means Being Able To Do The Work On A Bad Day.

Nearly Everything In The Scheme Of Things Works To Dull A First-rate Talent. But The Worst Probably Is Cowardice.

Horror Films Do Not Prepare Us For The Hours Lost In Searching After One Clear Thought.

I Become An Actor, A Quick-change Artist, As If I Can Trap The Prince Of Truth In The Act Of Switching A Style.

One Of The Reasons The English Got Through All Their Falls And The Loss Of Their Empire, All Their Disasters, Their Strikes, Their Difficulties, Their Wars Through The Years Was They Had Shakespeare To Fall Back On. And They Speak Well In England.

Any War That Requires The Suspension Of Reason As A Necessity For Support Is A Bad War.

Harsh Words Live In The Dungeon Of The Heart

The Essence Of Spirit ... Was To Choose The Thing Which Did Not Better One's Position But Made It More Perilous. That Was Why The World He Knew Was Poor, For It Insisted Morality And Caution Were Identical.

If You Can Change Style, Why Stick To One Style? Style Is A Vanity Because It Gives You Product Identification.

The Condition That Is Most Disagreeable In Your Life Becomes The Most Useful One. You Know, I Feel The Same Way About The U.s. Army. It Was Absolutely The Worst Experience Of My Life, And It Was Probably The Single Most Valuable Experience.

The Way You Write Affects What You Say.

The Contradictory Remarks Of Politicians Are Forgotten; The More Asinine Predictions Of Pundits Are Buried With Mercy.

As Many People Die From An Excess Of Timidity As From Bravery.

A Nation Fights Well In Proportion To The Amount Of Men And Materials It Has. And The Other Equation Is That The Individual Soldier In That Army Is A More Effective Soldier The Poorer His Standard Of Living Has Been In The Past.

One Will Feel The Same Subtle Nausea Coming Into The City Or Waiting To Depart From It That One Feels Now In Such Plastic Catacombs As O'hare's Reception Center In Chicago.

It's Very Bad To Write A Novel By Act Of Will. I Can Do A Book Of Nonfiction Work That Way - Just Sign The Contract And Do The Book Because, Provided The Topic Has Some Meaning For Me, I Know I Can Do It. But A Novel Is Different. A Novel Is More Like Falling In Love. You Don't Say, 'i'm Going To Fall In Love Next Tuesday, I'm Going To Begin My Novel.' The Novel Has To Come To You. It Has To Feel Just Like Love.

Falling In Love

We're All Divided Souls, We've Got Two Natures In Us, You Measure Schizophrenia Not By The Fact That You're Divided But How Well The Divisions Speak To One Another.

The Sense Of A Long Last Night Over Civilization Is Back Again.

Khomeini Has Offered Us The Opportunity To Regain Our Frail Religion ... Faith In The Power Of Words.

The True Religion Of America Has Always Been America.

There Are These Two Kinds Of Patriotism. There's Blind Patriotism, Unflagging Patriotism. And Then There's The Patriotism That Says I Live In A Democracy And It's Very Important For The Health And The Life Of This Democracy That It Get Better All The Time, Not Get Worse.

To Know What You Want To Say Is Not The Best Condition For Writing A Novel. Novels Go Happiest When You Discover Something You Did Not Know You Knew: An Insight Into One Of Your Opaque Characters, A Metaphor That Startles You... A Truth... That Used To Elude You.

Conservatives Are People Who Look At A Tree And Feel Instinctively That It Is More Beautiful Than Anything They Can Name. But When It Comes To Defending That Tree Against A Highway, They Will Go For The Highway.

The Sense Of A Long Last Night Over Civilization Is Back Again; It Has Perhaps Not Been Here So Intensely In Thirty Years, Not Since The Nazis Were Prospering, But It Is Coming Back.

We Sail Across Dominions Barely Seen, Washed By The Swells Of Time. We Plow Through Fields Of Magnetism. Past And Future Come Together On Thunderheads And Our Dead Hearts Live With Lightning In The Wounds Of The Gods.

I Really Am A Pessimist. I've Always Felt That Fascism Is A More Natural Governmental Condition Than Democracy. Democracy Is A Grace. It's Something Essentially Splendid Because It's Not At All Routine Or Automatic. Fascism Goes Back To Our Infancy And Childhood, Where We Were Always Told How To Live. We Were Told, Yes, You May Do This; No, You May Not Do That. So The Secret Of Fascism Is That It Has This Appeal To People Whose Later Lives Are Not Satisfactory.

One's Condition On Marijuana Is Always Existential. One Can Feel The Importance Of Each Moment And How It Is Changing One. One Feels One's Being, One Becomes Aware Of The Enormous Apparatus Of Nothingness - The Hum Of A Hi-fi Set, The Emptiness Of A Pointless Interruption, One Becomes Aware Of The War Between Each Of Us, How The Nothingness In Each Of Us Seeks To Attack The Being Of Others, How Our Being In Turn Is Attacked By The Nothingness In Others.

As Kierkegaard Was The First To Suggest, We Can Never Know Where Our Prayers Are Likely To Go Nor From Whom The Answers Will Come. When We Think We Are Nearest To God, We Could Be Assisting The Devil.

Movies Are More Likely Than Literature To Reach Deep Feelings In People.

Three Miles Long And Two Streets Wide, The Town Curls Around The Bay ... A Gaudy Run With Mediterranean Splashes Of Color, Crowded Steep-pitched Roofs, Fishing Piers And Fishing Boats Whose Stench Of Mackerel And Gasoline Is As Aphrodisiac To The Sensuous Nose As The Clean Bar-whisky Smell Of A Nightclub Where Call Girls Congregate.

Dying Can't Be All That Difficult-up To Now Everyone Has Managed To Do It.

So You Come Soon To Power, But You Have Merely Inherited The Crisis And Yours Is The Profit Of Cancer.

Giving A Camera To Diane Arbus Is Like Putting A Live Grenade In The Hands Of A Child.

Fascism Is More Of A Natural State Than Democracy. To Assume Blithely That We Can Export Democracy Into Any Country We Choose Can Serve Paradoxically To Encourage More Fascism At Home And Abroad. Democracy Is A State Of Grace That Is Attained Only By Those Countries Who Have A Host Of Individuals Not Only Ready To Enjoy Freedom But To Undergo The Heavy Labor Of Maintaining It.

We Are Close To Dead. There Are Faces And Bodies Like Gorged Maggots On The Dance Floor, On The Highway, In The City, In The Stadium; They Are A Host Of Chemical Machines Who Swallow The Product Of Chemical Factories, Aspirin, Preservatives, Stimulant, Relaxant, And Breathe Out Their Chemical Wastes Into A Polluted Air. The Sense Of A Long Last Night Over Civilization Is Back Again.

Every One Of My Books Had Killed Me A Little More.

I Met Jack Kennedy In November, 1946... We Went Out On A Double Date And It Turned Out To Be A Fair Evening For Me. I Seduced A Girl Who Would Have Been Bored By A Diamond As Big As The Ritz.

Culture's Worth Huge, Huge Risks. Without Culture We're All Totalitarian Beasts.

You Have The Right To Speak Your Mind.

Speak Your Mind

A Modern Democracy Is A Tyranny Whose Borders Are Undefined; One Discovers How Far One Can Go Only By Traveling In A Straight Line Until One Is Stopped.

Democracies Have

If Only Gravity Were Working, The Path Would Be Symmetrical, It Is The Wind Resistance That Produces The Tragic Curve.

Faction Is That Hybrid Of Documented Fact And Novelistic Elaboration.

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Antonio Damasio

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