Norman Mailer Quotes about Writing

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day.

Over the years, I've found one rule. It is the only one I give on those occasions when I talk about writing. A simple rule. If you tell yourself you are going to be at your desk tomorrow, you are by that declaration asking your unconscious to prepare the material. You are, in effect, contracting to pick up such valuables at a given time. Count on me, you are saying to a few forces below: I will be there to write.

The art of the novel is to arrive at that artless point where your characters become more real than yourself.

Over-certified adjectives are the mark of most best-seller writing

I always start a book for money. If you're married five times you have to.

Writers don't have lifestyles. They just sit in little rooms and write.

Writing for a newspaper is like running a revolutionary war. You go to battle not when you are ready, but when action offers itself.

To know what you want to say is not the best condition for writing a novel. Novels go happiest when you discover something you did not know you knew: an insight into one of your opaque characters, a metaphor that startles you... a truth... that used to elude you.

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.

Only another writer can know how much damage writing a novel can do to you. It's an unnatural activity to sit at a desk and squeeze words out of yourself.

The way you write affects what you say.

Alimony is the curse of the writing class.

I've always felt that my relationship to the United States is analogous to a marriage. I love this country. I hate it. I get angry at it. I feel close to it. I'm charmed by it. I'm repelled by it. And it's a marriage that's gone on for let's say at least 50 years of my writing life, and in the course of that, what's happened? It's gotten worse. It's not what it used to be.

Writing can wreck your body. You sit there on the chair hour after hour and sweat your guts out to get a few words.

It's not a good idea to put your wife into a novel; not your latest wife anyway.

I take it for granted that there's a side of me that loves public action, and there's another side of me that really wants to be alone and work and write. And I've learned to alternate the two as matters develop.

You can't be a serious writer of fiction unless you believe the story you are telling.

Amateurs... venture into scenes that a writer with more experience (and more professional concern) would bypass or eschew altogether.

Since great writers communicate a vision of existence, one can't borrow their methods. The method is married to the vision.

MIke Lee writes with honesty, penetration, wit and the ability to surprise the reader with an unexpected turn from time to time that enriches the experience.

When I read it ["Tough Guys Don't Dance"], I don't wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write.

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.