Quotes from book
Advertisements for Myself

Name: Advertisements for Myself
Author: Norman Mailer

Advertisements for Myself is an omnibus collection of fiction, essays, verse, and fragments by Norman Mailer, with autobiographical commentaries that he calls "advertisements." Advertisements was published by G.P. Putnam's Sons in 1959 after Mailer secured his reputation with The Naked and the Dead, then endured setbacks with the less-enthusiastic reception of Barbary Shore and The Deer Park .

“Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.”

Norman Mailer book Advertisements for Myself

"Hip, Hell, and the Navigator" in Western Review No. 23 (Winter 1959); republished in Conversations with Norman Mailer (1988) edited by J. Michael Lennon.
Source: Advertisements for Myself

“I guess all that's left is to love the fire.”

Norman Mailer book Advertisements for Myself

Source: Advertisements for Myself

“"Advertisement for 'Games and Ends'", Pt. 5”

Norman Mailer book Advertisements for Myself

Advertisements for Myself (1959)

“To be an existentialist, one must be able to feel oneself — one must know one’s desires, one’s rages, one’s anguish, one must be aware of the character of one’s frustration and know what would satisfy it. The over-civilized man can be an existentialist only if it is chic, and deserts it quickly for the next chic.”

Norman Mailer book Advertisements for Myself

"The White Negro", first published in Dissent (Summer 1957)
Advertisements for Myself (1959)

“I had my good looks, my blond hair, my height, build, and bullfighting school, I suppose I became one of the Village equivalents of an Eagle Scout badge for the girls. I was one of the credits needed for a diploma in the sexual humanities.”

Norman Mailer book Advertisements for Myself

Sergius O'Shaugnessy, in "The Time of Her Time"
Advertisements for Myself (1959)

“God like Us suffers the ambition to make a destiny more extraordinary than was conceived for Him, yes God is like Me, only more so.”

Norman Mailer book Advertisements for Myself

"Advertisement for Myself on the Way Out"
Advertisements for Myself (1959)

“The White Protestant's ultimate sympathy must be with science, factology, and committee rather than with sex, birth, heat, flesh, creation, the sweet and the funky; they must vote, manipulate, control, and direct, these Protestants who are the center of power in our land, they must go for what they believe is reason when it is only the Square logic of the past.”

Norman Mailer book Advertisements for Myself

Advertisements for Myself (1959)

“Hip is the sophistication of the wise primitive in a giant jungle.”

Norman Mailer book Advertisements for Myself

"The White Negro", first published in Dissent (Summer 1957)
Advertisements for Myself (1959)

“There is probably no sensitive heterosexual alive who is not preoccupied with his latent homosexuality.”

Norman Mailer book Advertisements for Myself

"The Homosexual Villain"; this has also been widely misquoted as: "There is probably no heterosexual alive who is not preoccupied with his latent homosexuality."
Advertisements for Myself (1959)

“Each day a few more lies eat into the seed with which we are born, little institutional lies from the print of newspapers, the shock waves of television, and the sentimental cheats of the movie screen.”

Norman Mailer book Advertisements for Myself

"First Advertisement for Myself"
Advertisements for Myself (1959)

“America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.”

Norman Mailer book Advertisements for Myself

"Advertisement for 'Games and Ends'", Pt. 5
Advertisements for Myself (1959)

“When the wind carries a cry which is meaningful to human ears, it is simpler to believe the wind shares with us some part of the emotion of Being than that the mysteries of a hurricane's rising murmur reduce to no more than the random collision of insensate molecules.”

Norman Mailer book Advertisements for Myself

"Advertisement for Myself on the Way Out"
Advertisements for Myself (1959)