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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.

-Norman Mailer

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Everything Wrong With America

Norman Mailer

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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.

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I Hate Everything Which Is Not In Myself.

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Somewhere, Something Incredible Happened In History - The Wrong Guys Won.

And So I Ask, "would You Agree That Sex Is Where Philosophy Begins?" But God, Who Is The Oldest Of The Philosophers, Answers In His Weary Cryptic Way, "rather Think Of Sex As Time, And Time As The Connection Of New Circuits.

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

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Somerset Maugham ... Wrote Somewhere That "nobody Is Any Better Than He Ought To Be."... I Carried It Along With Me As A Working Philosophy, But I Suppose That Finally I Would Have To Take Exception To The Thought ... Or Else The Universe Is Just An Elaborate Clock.

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Democracies Have

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Alimony Is The Curse Of The Writing Class.

The True Religion Of America Has Always Been America.

I Certainly Do Have This Feeling Of Affection For The Absolute Sense Of Intellectual Freedom That Exists As A Live Nerve, A Live Wire, Right Through The Center Of American Life.

In Such Places As Greenwich Village, A Menage-a-trois Was Completed- The Bohemian And The Juvenile Delinquent Came Face-to-face With The Negro, And The Hipster Was A Fact In American Life.

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The Highest Prize In A World Of Men Is The Most Beautiful Woman Available On Your Arm And Living There In Her Heart Loyal To You.

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

Psychoanalysis And Zen, In My Private Psychic Geometry, Are Equal To Nicotine. They Are Anti-existential. Nicotine Quarantines One Out Of Existence.

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God Is A Creator, Not A Law Giver.

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.

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.

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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.

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Tough Guys Don't Dance. You Had Better Believe It.

The Writer Can Grow As A Person Or He Can Shrink. ... His Curiosity, His Reaction To Life Must Not Diminish. The Fatal Thing Is To Shrink, To Be Interested In Less, Sympathetic To Less, Desiccating To The Point Where Life Itself Loses Its Flavor, And One’s Passion For Human Understanding Changes To Weariness And Distaste.

Culture Is Worth A Little Risk.

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

Women Think Of Being A Man As A Gift. It Is A Duty. Even Making Love Can Be A Duty. A Man Has Always Got To Get It Up, And Love Isn't Always Enough.

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.

Faction Is That Hybrid Of Documented Fact And Novelistic Elaboration.

The Novelist ... Must Live In Paranoia And Seek To Be One With The World; He Must Be Terrified Of Experience And Hungry For It; He Must Think Himself Nothing And Believe He Is Superior To All.

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.

I Guess All That's Left Is To Love The Fire.

If God Is All Good, Then He Is Not All Powerful. If God Is All Powerful, Then He Is Not All Good. I Am A Disbeliever Is The Omnipotence Of God Because Of The Holocaust. But For 35 Years, I Have Been Believing That He Is Doing The Best He Can.

I've Always Felt That My Relationship To The United States Is Analogous To A Marriage. I Love This Country. I Hate It. I Get Angry At It. I Feel Close To It. I'm Charmed By It. I'm Repelled By It. And It's A Marriage That's Gone On For Let's Say At Least 50 Years Of My Writing Life, And In The Course Of That, What's Happened? It's Gotten Worse. It's Not What It Used To Be.

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

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

There Is Probably No Heterosexual Alive Who Is Not Preoccupied With His Latent Homosexuality.

What's Not Realized About Good Novelists Is That They're As Competitive As Good Athletes. They Study Each Other - Where The Other Person Is Good And Where The Person Is Less Good. Writers Are Like That But Don't Admit It.

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

The Women's Movement Is Filled With Tyrants, Just As Men's Political Movements Are Equally Filled.

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.

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.

I Am Not Here Only So That The Blind Might See, But To Teach Those Who Thought They Could See That They Are Blind

Cancer Is The Growth Of Madness Denied.

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.

Boredom Slays More Of Existence Than War.

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.

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.

Only Another Writer Can Know How Much Damage Writing A Novel Can Do To You. It's An Unnatural Activity To Sit At A Desk And Squeeze Words Out Of Yourself.

Madness Is Locked Beneath. It Goes Into Tissues, Is Swallowed By The Cells. The Cells Go Mad. Cancer Is Their Flag. Cancer Is Thegrowth Of Madness Denied.

America Is A Hurricane, And The Only People Who Do Not Hear The Sound Are Those Fortunate If Incredibly Stupid And Smug White Protestants Who Live In The Center, In The Serene Eye Of The Big Wind.

Part Of Living, Part Of Becoming A Wise Man Or A Wise Woman, Is To Get To That Point Where You Can Have A Friend For Whom You Are Genuinely Happy When He Or She Has A Success. That's Tough. Very Few People Get To That Point. With Writers It's Next To Impossible. You Can't Really Bless A Writer Who's As Good As Yourself.

Short-term Amnesia Is Not The Worst Affliction If You Have An Irish Flair For The Sauce.

You Do Not Really Wish To Hear More Of The Battle Of Kadesh. Let Me Say Only That Human Fat, Gorged In Considerable Quantity, Has An Intoxicating Effect. I Became ... Drunk.

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

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

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.

I Usually Need A Can Of Beer To Prime Me.

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.

Growth Is A Greater Mystery Than Death. All Of Us Can Understand Failure, We All Contain Failure And Death Within Us, But Not Even The Successful Man Can Begin To Describe The Impalpable Elations And Apprehensions Of Growth.

The Private Terror Of The Liberal Spirit Is Invariably Suicide, Not Murder.

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

A High Church For The True Mediocre.

I Never Saw Love As Luck, As That Gift From The Gods Which Put Everything Else In Place, And Allowed You To Succeed. No, I Saw Love As Reward. One Could Find It Only After One's Virtue, Or One's Courage, Or Self-sacrifice, Or Generosity, Or Loss, Has Succeeded In Stirring The Power Of Creation.

I Really Gave Up Being Passionate About Politics 10, 15, 20 Years Ago, Because I Think Finally That There Were Forces In The Country That Are Larger Than Politics Itself. And So I Find It A Fascinating Game, This Wonderful Stuff Goes On In Terms Of Watching The Game. But If You Get To Down It, Look, I`m Going To Root For Someone, I`ll Root At A Football Game, Not For Politicians.

Patterned After An Italian Renaissance Palace, It Is 88 Times As Large And One Millionth As Valuable To The Continuation Of Man. That Pentagon Of Traveling Salesmen.

In America Few People Will Trust You Unless You Are Irreverent.

Reagan Bankrupted The Soviet Union By Increasing Armaments.

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

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

What Is There About Polarity That Is Matter Becoming More Complex?

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

We Are In Love With The Word. We Are Proud Of It. The Word Precedes The Formation Of The State. The Word Comes To Us From Every Avatar Of Early Human Existence. As Writers, We Are Obliged More Than Others To Keep Our Lives Attached To The Primitive Power Of The Word. From India, Out Of The Vedas, We Still Hear: On The Spoken Word, All The Gods Depend, All Beasts And Men; In The World Live All Creatures...the Word Is The Name Of The Divine World.

With The Pride Of The Artist, You Must Blow Against The Walls Of Every Power That Exists The Small Trumpet Of Your Defiance.

I Do Believe That America's Deepest Political Sickness Is That It Is A Self-righteous Nation.

I'm Hostile To Men, I'm Hostile To Women, I'm Hostile To Cats, To Poor Cockroaches, I'm Afraid Of Horses.

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

Revolutions Are The Periods Of History When Individuals Count Most.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

To Be Married To A Good Woman Is To Live With Tender Surprise.

There Was That Law Of Life, So Cruel And So Just, That One Must Grow Or Else Pay More For Remaining The Same.

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.

When A Novel Comes, It's A Grace. Something In The Cosmos Has Forgiven You Long Enough So That You Can Start.

The Way You Write Affects What You Say.

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