On Writing | A man lays his character on the line | Norman Mailer, 1923-2007
Norman Mailer, 1940s
“The mark of mediocrity is to look for precedent.”
“Writer’s block is only a failure of the ego.”
“Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.”
“I start with the idea of constructing a treehouse and end up with a skyscraper made of wood.”
“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.”
“A man lays his character on the line when he writes a novel. Anything in him which is lazy, or meretricious, or unthought-out, complacent, fearful, overambitious, or terrified by the ultimate logic of his exploration will be revealed in his book.”
“Good readers do not read fiction, after all, to put up with the author’s regrets.”
Norman Mailer, 1923-2007