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
We divorced ourselves from the materials of the earth, the rock, the wood, the iron ore; we looked to new materials which were cooked in vats, long complex derivatives of urine which we called plastic. They had no odor of the living, ... their touch was alien to nature. ... [They proliferated] like the matastases of cancer cells.
Interpretation
The quote critiques humanity's reliance on synthetic materials over natural ones, highlighting the alienation from nature.
Norman Mailer expresses concern about the shift from natural materials, such as wood and stone, to artificial substances like plastic. He suggests that this transition has distanced humans from the essence of nature, comparing the proliferation of synthetic materials to the spread of cancer cells, implying that these materials, though useful, are harmful to both the environment and humanity's relationship with the natural world.
In practice
This quote can be shared at an environmental conference to emphasize the importance of using natural materials.
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.
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.
There's nothing glorious about being a professional. . . . Professionalism probably comes down to being able to work on a bad day.
The natural role of twentieth-century man is anxiety.
Over-certified adjectives are the mark of most best-seller writing
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.
I have a different idea of a universal. It is of a universal rich with all that is particular, rich with all the particulars there are, the deepening of each particular, the coexistence of them all.
I remained a socialist for several years, even after my rejection of Marxism; and if there could be such a thing as socialism combined with individual liberty, I would be a socialist still. For nothing could be better than living a modest, simple, and free life in an egalitarian society.
The word of God hidden in the heart is a stubborn voice to suppress.
Enlightenment is like everyday consciousness but two inches above the ground.
Most men seem to live according to sense rather than reason.
i discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind, but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature.
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