The Spooky Art Quotes

“Characters in novels sometimes radiate more energy, therefore, when we don’t enter their mind. It is one of the techniques a novelist acquires instinctively—don’t go into your protagonist’s thoughts until you have something to say about his or her inner life that is more interesting than the reader’s suppositions.”
― Norman Mailer, The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing

“Metaphor reveals a writer’s true grasp of life. To the degree that you have no metaphor, you have not yet lived much of a life.”
― Norman Mailer, The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing

“Just as a fighter has to feel that he possesses the right to do physical damage to another man, so a writer has to be ready to take chances with his readers’ lives.”
― Norman Mailer, The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing

“The compulsive talker must go through the herculean transformation of learning to quit or must become a great monologuist.”
― Norman Mailer, The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing

“More sensitive than others in the beginning, we have to develop the will, the stamina, the determination, and the insensitivity to take critical abuse. A good writer, therefore, does well to see himself as a strong, weak person, full of brave timidity, sensitive and insensitive.”
― Norman Mailer, The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing

“Having reshaped my words with an intensity of feeling I had not known before, I could not understand why others were not overcome with my sense of life, of sex, and of sadness.”
― Norman Mailer, The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing

“Tolstoy teaches us that compassion is of value and enriches our life only when compassion is severe, which is to say that we can perceive everything that is good and bad about a character but are still able to feel that the sum of us as human beings is probably a little more good than awful. In any case, good or bad, it reminds us that life is like a gladiators’ arena for the soul and so we can feel strengthened by those who endure, and feel awe and pity for those who do not.”
― Norman Mailer, The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing

“Craft protects one from facing endless expanding realities—the terror, let us say, of losing your novel in the depths of philosophical insights you are not ready to live with.”
― Norman Mailer, The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing

“You can’t change a single word. What is tensile strength? It is that all the components are working together. I repeat: You can’t change a single word. The best short stories are built on this premise.”
― Norman Mailer, The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing