“Somerset Maugham … wrote somewhere that "Nobody is any better than he ought to be." … I carried it along with me as a working philosophy, but I suppose that finally I would have to take exception to the thought … or else the universe is just an elaborate clock.”

—  Norman Mailer, book Barbary Shore

Source: Barbary Shore (1951), Ch. 10

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Norman Mailer165
American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film m… 1923–2007

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