Norman Mailer Quotes

'Swingers' was always set in another world.

There has always been, for me, this other world, this second world to fall back on--a more reliable world in so far as it does not hide that its premise is illusion.

I want to create something that doesn't exist exactly in the real world, but exists in a kind of parallel to the real world.

It's my job, to create a fantasy.

I always needed that extra fantasy world. I had to have another world I could be in at the same time.

I could invent another world. I'm not terribly keen on this one.

Exquisite nature, daydreams, and music say one thing, real life another.

I'm creating an imaginary — it's always imaginary — world in which I would like to live.

The board transported its jurisdiction to a never-never land where a Dorothy of the new millennium might exclaim: "They still call it Kansas, but I don't think we're in the real world anymore."

Don't we want to escape our real world and go into something larger than that, simpler than that, more beautiful or darker?

I often look at places and kind of mentally convert them to fantasy versions of themselves.

I've always felt more comfortable in fantasy. Fantasy has felt more real to me at times. Drawing was an immediate outlet for that: to create. It's been my ability to create my own world.

I thought Doodyville was inside of the television. You know, like, if television was this box - and if I went inside the box that was a television, I'd be in Doodyville.

I mean, I'm on a comic book. I'm in a video game. This is not real life.

It's amazing to dwell in the world of fantasy and fear.

I actually enjoy the fantasy world quite a bit. You have no boundaries.

Live in contact with dreams and you will get something of their charm: live in contact with facts and you will get something of their brutality. I wish I could find a country to live in where the facts were not brutal and the dreams not real.

I find that with fantasy, you lose yourself in it a lot. It's great to be able to go into a dark theater or turn off the lights in your house and just get sucked into this world. I remember watching Star Wars when I was a little kid when they did the re-release of all the originals. I couldn't even read yet but my uncle took me and he would read me the opening as the words were coming up on the screen. I just remember being so sucked into that and thinking, "I want to be Luke Skywalker."

Last year, when he had been staying with the Pevensies, he had managed to hear them all talking of Narnia and he loved teasing them about it. He thought of course that they were making it all up; and as he was far too stupid to make anything up himself, he did not approve of that.

The creative writer does the same as the child at play; he creates a world of fantasy which he takes very seriously.

If there's any kind of morality, for me, it's about reality; what is reality? I have a hard time distinguishing what is valuable when it comes to the real world and the fantasy world. Like, should I invest my time in the ordinary world or the imaginary world?

When I was 35 I realized that I was still thinking a lot about what it would be like to go to Narnia. To really go - not just in a daydream, or in a children's book, but what it would actually feel like, physically, psychologically, every other way. The idea was haunting me.

Because the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe. She must start out believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination.

She preferred imaginary heroes to real ones, because when tired of them, the former could be shut up in the tin kitchen till called for, and the latter were less manageable.

Tonight, I've finally learned to tell fantasy from reality. And, knowing the difference, I choose fantasy.