Crude thoughts and fierce forces are my state. I do not know who I am. Nor what I was. I cannot hear a sound. Pain is near that will be like no pain felt before.
Norman MailerRead
Alimony is the curse of the writing class.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Alimony is a burden that often affects writers negatively, impacting their creative lives.
Norman Mailer suggests that the obligations of alimony can stifle the creative process for writers. By referring to it as a 'curse,' he emphasizes how financial responsibilities can detract from the freedom of expression and artistry that is essential to a writer's work.
Themes
AlimonyWritingCreativityBurdenFreedom
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during a writers' workshop to discuss the challenges of balancing financial responsibilities and creative pursuits.
More from Norman Mailer
All quotes βI no longer gave a sick dog's drop for the wisdom, the reliability and the authority of the public's literary mind, those creeps and old ladies of vested reviewing.
Norman MailerRead
There's nothing glorious about being a professional. . . . Professionalism probably comes down to being able to work on a bad day.
Norman MailerRead
The natural role of twentieth-century man is anxiety.
Norman MailerRead
Over-certified adjectives are the mark of most best-seller writing
Norman MailerRead
At bottom, I mean profoundly at bottom, the FBI has nothing to do with Communism, it has nothing to do with catching criminals, it has nothing to do with the Mafia, the syndicate, it has nothing to do with trust-busting, it has nothing to do with interstate commerce, it has nothing to do with anything but serving as a church for the mediocre. A high church for the true mediocre.
Norman MailerRead
Similar quotes
Talents of the novelist: ... observation of character, analysis of emotion, people's feelings, personal relations.
Virginia WoolfRead
Make something, a kind of object, which as it changes or falls apart (dies as it were) or increases in its parts (grows as it were) offers no clue as to what its state or form or nature was at any previous time. Physical and Metaphysical. Obstinacy. Could this be a useful object?
Jasper JohnsRead
Architecture is always the will of the age conceived as space - nothing else. Until this simple truth is clearly recognized, the struggle over the foundation of a new architecture confident in its aims and powerful in its impact cannot be realized; until then, it is destined to remain a chaos of uncoordinated forces.
Ludwig Mies Van Der RoheRead
I knew nothing about the technique of story writing, and now, after eighteen years of writing, I still know nothing about the technique, although with the publication of my new novel, Tarzan and the Lost Empire, there are 31 books on my list.
Edgar Rice BurroughsRead
I want to be an artist, an actress with integrity, and that includes all kinds of parts.
Marilyn MonroeRead
My head is full of fire and grief and my tongue runs wild, pierced with shards of glass.
Federico Garcia LorcaRead