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Indeed The Early History Of Rocket Design Could Be Read As The Simple Desire To Get The Rocket To Function Long Enough To Give An Opportunity To Discover Where The Failure Occurred. Most Early Debacles Were So Benighted That Rocket Engineers Could Have Been Forgiven For Daubing The Blood Of A Virgin Goat On The Orifice Of The Firing Chamber.

-Norman Mailer

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Indeed The Early History

Norman Mailer

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Indeed The Early History Of Rocket Design Could Be Read As The Simple Desire To Get The Rocket To Function Long Enough To Give An Opportunity To Discover Where The Failure Occurred. Most Early Debacles Were So Benighted That Rocket Engineers Could Have Been Forgiven For Daubing The Blood Of A Virgin Goat On The Orifice Of The Firing Chamber.

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Did A Sense Of Shame Ever Reside In Our Republican Toadies? You Can't Stop People Who Are Never Embarrassed By Themselves. Will's Readiness To Turn A Sow's Ear Into A Silk Purse Can Be Cited As World Class Sycophancy.

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Bright Was The Light Of My Last Martini On My Moral Horizon

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The Sickness Of Our Times For Me Has Been Just This Damn Thing That Everything Has Been Getting Smaller And Smaller And Less And Less Important, That The Romantic Spirit Has Dried Up, That There Is No Shame Today. We're All Getting So Mean And Small And Petty And Ridiculous, And We All Live Under The Threat Of Extermination.

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

Murder Offers The Promise Of Vast Relief. It Is Never Unsexual.

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

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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

The True Religion Of America Has Always Been America.

I Had The Idea That There Were Two Worlds. There Was A Real World As I Called It, A World Of Wars And Boxing Clubs And Children'shomes On Back Streets, And This Real World Was A World Where Orphans Burned Orphans.... I Liked The Other World In Which Almost Everyone Lived. The Imaginary World.

I Hate Everything Which Is Not In Myself.

I Don't Read Other Writers Because I'm Writing All The Time. It's Too Disturbing To Read A Writer With A Good Style When You're In The Middle Of Putting Your Work Together.

Working Together

The Great Power In America Is The Corporations - We`re A Corporate Country. We`re Run By A Ceo And The Stockholders Have Very Little To Say On How The Corporation Is Run. Fine, The Board Of Directors Run It And The Stockholders Can Just Be Disgruntled, But Who Gives A Damn?

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

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

What Characterizes A Member Of A Minority Group Is That He Is Forced To See Himself As Both Exceptional And Insignificant, Marvelous And Awful, Good And Evil.

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

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

When I Read It ["tough Guys Don't Dance"], I Don't Wince, Which Is All I Ever Ask For A Book I Write.

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.

Left-wingers Are Incapable Of Conspiring Because They Are All Egomaniacs.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Every Moment Of One's Existence One Is Growing Into More Or Retreating Into Less. One Is Always Living A Little More Or Dying A Little Bit.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Los Angeles Is A Constellation Of Plastic.

There Is No Greater Impotence In All The World Like Knowing You Are Right And That The Wave Of The World Is Wrong, Yet The Wave Crashes Upon You.

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.

A Really Good Style Comes Only When A Man Has Become As Good As He Can Be. Style Is Character. A Good Style Cannot Come From A Bad Undisciplined Character.

It All Comes Down To Who Does The Dishes.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

People 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.

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.

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.

We Love Those Who Can Lead Us To A Place We Will Never Reach Without Them.

Cute Friendship

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?

In My Day The Library Was A Wonderful Place.... We Didn't Have Visual Aids And Didn't Have Various Programs...it Was A Sanctuary.... So I Tend To Think The Library Should Remain A Center Of Knowledge.

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.

The Natural Role Of Twentieth-century Man Is Anxiety.

Revolutions Are The Periods Of History When Individuals Count Most.

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.

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 Have An Absolute Right In A Democracy To Argue About A War.

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

What Were The Phenomena Of The World Today? If I Knew Little Else, I Knew The Answer - War, And The Preparations For New War.

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.

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.

We Think Of Marilyn Who Was Every Man's Love Affair With America. Marilyn Monroe Who Was Blonde And Beautiful And Had A Sweet Little Rinky-dink Of A Voice And All The Cleanliness Of All The Clean American Backyards.

Prevarication, Like Honesty, Is Reflexive, And Soon Becomes A Sturdy Habit, As Reliable As Truth.

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

The Horror Of The Twentieth Century Was The Size Of Each New Event, And The Paucity Of Its Reverberation.

Culture Is Worth A Little Risk.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

You Don't Know A Woman Until You've Met Her In Court.

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.

Love Was Love, One Could Find It With Anyone, One Could Find It Anywhere. It Was Just That You Could Never Keep It. Not Unless You Were Ready To Die For It.

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

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