Norman Mailer Love Quotations

It's very bad to write a novel by act of will. I can do a book of nonfiction work that way - just sign the contract and do the book because, provided the topic has some meaning for me, I know I can do it. But a novel is different. A novel is more like falling in love. You don't say, 'I'm going to fall in love next Tuesday, I'm going to begin my novel.' The novel has to come to you. It has to feel just like love.

I am convinced the most unfortunate people are those who would make an art of love. It sours other effort. Of all artists, they are certainly the most wretched.

I never saw love as luck, as that gift from the gods which put everything else in place, and allowed you to succeed. No, I saw love as reward. One could find it only after one's virtue, or one's courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity, or loss, has succeeded in stirring the power of creation.

Women think of being a man as a gift. It is a duty. Even making love can be a duty. A man has always got to get it up, and love isn't always enough.

Comfortless was my religion, anxiety of the anxieties, for I believed God was not love, but courage. Love came only as a reward.

Love is simple to understand if you haven't got a mind soft and full of holes. It's a crutch, that's all, and there isn't any one of us that doesn't need a crutch.

It is the actions of men and not their sentiments that make history. Our sentiments can be loaded with love within, but our actions can turn into the opposite. Perversity is always ready to consort with human nature.

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.

One thing I've learned in all these years is not to make love when you really don't feel it; there's probably nothing worse you can do to yourself than that.