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. – Norman Mailer
In America few people will trust you unless you are irreverent. – Norman Mailer
Any workout which does not involve a certain minimum of danger or responsibility does not improve the body – it just wears it out. – Norman Mailer
There is no greater impotence in all the world like knowing you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave crashes upon you. – Norman Mailer
Jews and homosexuals are the outstanding creative minorities in contemporary urban culture. Creative, that is, in the truest sense: they are creators of sensibilities. The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony. – Susan Sontag