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The difference between writing a book and being on television is the difference between conceiving a child and having a baby made in a test tube.

— Norman Mailer

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Source and credibility

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Source: "The Siege of Mailer : Hero to Historian" in The Village Voice (21 January 1971); republished in Conversations with Norman Mailer (1988), edited by J. Michael Lennon
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

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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.

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More quotes by Norman Mailer

The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.

One's condition on marijuana is always existential. One can feel the importance of each moment and how it is changing one.

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We live in a time which has created the art of the absurd. It is our art.

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The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

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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.

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Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

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It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge.

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There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

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People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Norman Mailer (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.