I 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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects a deep sense of existential confusion and impending suffering.
Norman Mailer's quote expresses a state of intense inner turmoil and existential questioning. The speaker grapples with the confusion of identity and the anticipation of overwhelming pain, suggesting a profound struggle with self-awareness and the human experience of suffering, hinting that the future holds challenges that may surpass any previously known struggle.
Themes
IdentityPainExistentialismSufferingSelf-Awareness
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about personal struggles and identity, you might say, 'As Norman Mailer once expressed, I do not know who I am...'
More from Norman Mailer
All quotes →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
Alimony is the curse of the writing class.
Norman MailerRead
Similar quotes
All other ways of mortification are vain, all helps leave us helpless; it must be done by the Spirit.
John OwenRead
What is not brought to consciousness, comes to us as fate.
Carl JungRead
We knew - but didn't want to know - what was going to happen, the sky descending upon our heads like the shadow of a falling piano in a cartoon.
Aleksandar HemonRead
It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.
Jane AustenRead
Because the world is so full of death and horror, I try again and again to console my heart and pick the flowers that grow in the midst of hell.
Hermann HesseRead
The trouble with you and me, is that we don't live in the real world. We dream of fantastic things that may never happen.
Agatha ChristieRead