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0e73900
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but I am infinitely more sorrowful about the two victims' families than the fact Mr. Gilmore is no longer alive.
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Norman Mailer |
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e424c35
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He had been certain that religion was there for a very good practical reason. It couldn't be simpler--you had to keep the weak and unruly in order. But a man of pride (such as himself) could do as he chose.
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Norman Mailer |
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3549475
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Think of how hot a fire must be to call out the will of iron that is in the ore. Iron is strong against every force except the one that made it into iron.
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Norman Mailer |
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394264f
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Nothing could be better than the moment when a woman opened her legs for you. That first time! If you had an eye for the little differences, you knew twice as much about her as you could learn from her face. Alois Senior would attest to that. The female organ! Whoever designed this form had certainly been sly about the job. (This was about as close as Alois ever came to admiring the Creator.)
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Norman Mailer |
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8656df9
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The mark of a truly stupid man," he announced to Klara, "is that he takes his own occupation so seriously that he comes to believe it is superior to others."
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Norman Mailer |
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1ce3746
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And with it all, he was proud of himself. He had brought his mother to tears. "Let her cry for once. Not me. It is time for her to learn."
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Norman Mailer |
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83114d7
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All you need do is nod. I already know nine parts in ten of what he will say, but it is like fishing. Be patient, and you will get what you came for.
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Norman Mailer |
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0344fee
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Once History inhabits a crazy house, egotism may be the last tool left to History.
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Norman Mailer |
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5f8f481
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You, Lowell, beloved poet of many, what do you know of the dirt and the dark deliveries of the necessary? What do you know of dignity hard-achieved, and dignity lost through innocence, and dignity lost by sacrifice for a cause one cannot name. What do you know about getting fat against your will, and turning into a clown of an arriviste baron when you would rather be an eagle or a count, or rarest of all, some natural aristocrat from these ..
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Norman Mailer |
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a68c63d
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Let the passions and cupidities and dreams and kinks and ideals and greed and hopes and foul corruptions of all men and women have their day and the world will still be better off, for there is more good than bad in the sum of us and our workings.
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optimistic
review
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Norman Mailer |
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953b242
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No, just as Marlon Brando seemed to inhabit a role as though it were a natural extension of his mood, so Ali treated boxing.
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Norman Mailer |
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3dddb64
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He had been given the job and he was going to do it. But now for the first time he hated it genuinely. Perhaps there had been too many fatigue-products, perhaps the cumulative labor had dissolved and reshaped the structures of his mind, but in any case he was wretched with this work, and as a corollary he understood suddenly that he had always hated the drudgery of his farm work, the unending monotonous struggle against an arid unyielding s..
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Norman Mailer |
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18b449b
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For the first time in civilized history, perhaps for the first time in all of history, we have been forced to live with the suppressed knowledge that the smallest facets of our personality or the most minor projection of our ideas, or indeed the absence of ideas and the absence of personality could mean equally well that we might still be doomed to die as a cipher in some vast statistical operation in which our teeth would be counted, and o..
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Norman Mailer |
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bb9c37e
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He was drinking and contemplating his fear. It seemed to him that he had been afraid all his life, but in recent years, or so it seemed, he had learned how to take a step into his fear, how to take the action which frightened him most (and so could free him the most). He did not do it always, who could? but he had come to think that the secret to growth was to be brave a little more than one was cowardly, simple as that, indeed
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Norman Mailer |
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6bb3cbd
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It seemed to him that he had been afraid all his life, but in recent years, or so it seemed, he had learned how to take a step into his fear, how to take the action which frightened him most (and so could free him the most). He did not do it always, who could? but he had come to think that the secret to growth was to be brave a little more than one was cowardly, simple as that, indeed
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Norman Mailer |
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edfabc8
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When you start to open a door, the pressure has to be greatest in the beginning, yet the door moves the least.
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Norman Mailer |
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5ecde6e
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One's own literary work was the only answer to the war in Vietnam.
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Norman Mailer |
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9adbbbe
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She was a good girl, he said to himself. He was thinking without quite phrasing it that no other person had ever understood him so fully, and he felt a secret relief as he realized that she had understood him and still loved him.
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Norman Mailer |
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ebd987c
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His nerves were more keyed than he had realized. "Quit the bitching and let's go," he heard himself piping. He was damn tired of them, he realized suddenly. "That sonofabitch," one of them muttered. It shocked him, and generated resentment. He repressed it, however. What they were doing was understandable enough. In the fatigue of the march, they had to have someone to blame, and no matter what he did they would hate him sooner or later. Hi..
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Norman Mailer |
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5700c8d
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There was a way, of course, to deal with the papers. If the ears of the reporters were geared to capture accurately the mediocre remarks of mediocre men, then one had to look for simple salient statements, so poetically bare, but so irreducible, that they would stick in the reporter's mind like a thorn.
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Norman Mailer |
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783f72a
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I was in love with a beautiful, brilliant girl who was married to the most elegant and incisive gent I had ever met; there was no hope for me but, oh, the love was beautiful. Mr.
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Norman Mailer |
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2746ca0
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Happiness is experienced most directly in the intervals between terror.
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Norman Mailer |
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9b86ee9
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I've never been to the Playboy mansion," he wrote, "but Thyme Hill must make Hugh Hefner look like a spinster having a few lady friends in for tea." He"
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Norman Mailer |
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355f084
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I heard her calling to me from caverns so deep in herself she was never aware of her own voice.
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Norman Mailer |
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7df2987
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Since he had, in contrast to his delivery, a big burly squared-off bulk of a body which gave hint of the methodical ruthlessness of more than one Russian bureaucrat, Von Braun's relatively small voice, darting eyes, and semaphoric presentations of lip made it obvious he was a man of opposites. He
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Norman Mailer |
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e600dff
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There seems to be endless capacity for strife in your system." "Of course there is. Doesn't that fit human nature?"
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Norman Mailer |
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717048e
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Margaret is kindled by it, exalted for a time, sees it as passion, glows and becomes rounded, but only for a time. After a year it is completely naked, apparent to her, that he is alone, that he fights out battles with himself upon her body, and something withers in her.
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Norman Mailer |
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157ee34
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Was the conquest of space then a potential chariot of Satan, the unique and grand avenue for the new totalitarian?
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Norman Mailer |
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0a6bca8
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Maybe all illness results from a failure of communication between mind and body. It is certainly true of such quick disease as a knockout.
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Norman Mailer |
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8260848
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For if we are our own force, we are also a servant of the forces of the dead. So we have to be bold enough to live with all the magical forces at loose between the living and the dead. That is never free of dread. It takes bravery to live with beauty or wealth if we think of them as an existence connected to the messages, the curses, and the loyalties of the dead. In
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Norman Mailer |
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73802b2
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concept among apicultural cognoscenti;
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Norman Mailer |
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16879a8
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I'm not saying its right to break the law. I'm not talkin about that--but these prisons as they exist are wrong.
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Norman Mailer |
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08aa0ba
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lofting itself massively into the low-hanging clouds of the sky. In the early drab twilight it looked like an immense old gray elephant erecting himself somberly on his front legs, his haunches lost in the green bedding of his lair. The mountain seemed wise and powerful, and terrifying in its size. Gallagher stared at it in absorption, caught by a sense of beauty he could not express. The idea, the vision he always held of something finer a..
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Norman Mailer |
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6cf8699
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For it's exactly when we come closest to another, that we are turned away with a lie, and blunder forward to comprehend ourselves on the misperceptions of the past.
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Norman Mailer |
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aa7ee10
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Gary Mark Gilmore: Go down on me, partner... I need it Nicole Baker: Don't call me partner. Gary Mark Gilmore: No, darlin'... I love it... I love it Nicole Baker: Yeah, you and seven other motherfuckers.
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Norman Mailer |
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b590a02
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You can say the universe is a splendidly worked-up system of disinformation calculated to make us believe in evolution and so divert us away from God. Yes, that is exactly what I would do if I were the Lord and could not trust
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Norman Mailer |
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858a3af
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The aim of these gatherings is to acquaint you with the factology of facts. One has to know whether one is dealing with the essential or the circumferential fact. Historical data, after all, tend to be not particularly factual and subject to revision by later researchers. You must look to start, therefore, with the fact that cannot be smashed into sub-particles of fact.
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Norman Mailer |
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15ea95e
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For guilt was the existential edge of sex. Without guilt, sex was meaningless.
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Norman Mailer |
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eed80a3
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Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.
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Norman Mailer |
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d82a0c7
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This is D.J., Disc Jockey to America turning off. Vietnam, hot dam.
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Norman Mailer |
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38e65cd
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A little bit of rape is good for a man's soul.
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Norman Mailer |
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4905d9f
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The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.
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Norman Mailer |
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360082a
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Culture is worth a little risk.
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Norman Mailer |
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f8c92a4
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Short-term amnesia is not the worst affliction if you have an Irish flair for the sauce.
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Norman Mailer |