Literary Birthday – 31 January – Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer was born 31 January 1923, and died 10 November 2007.

Norman Mailer: 10 Quotes On Writing

1. Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.
2. One of my basic notions for a long, long time is that there is this mysterious mountain out there called reality. We novelists are always trying to climb it. We are mountaineers, and the question is, Which face do you attack? Different faces call for different approaches, and some demand a knotty and convoluted interior style. Others demand great simplicity. The point is that style is an attack on the nature of reality.
3. I don’t know if I need seclusion, but I do like to be alone in a room.
4. Writing can wreck your body. You sit there on the chair hour after hour and sweat your guts out to get a few words.
5. Writer’s block is only a failure of the ego.
6. It’s difficult to write about childhood. I never felt I understood it in any novel way. I never felt other authors did either. Not particularly. I think the portrait of childhood which is given by most writers is rarely true to anything more than the logic of their novel.
7. Every one of my books had killed me a little more.
8. I think it’s bad to talk about one’s present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.
9. Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists.
10. 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.