Norman Mailer Quotes

I think in order to move forward into the future, you need to know where you've been.

Our goal is to move forward, but we know that to avoid falling backward, we must be willing to look backward and to come to terms with what happened in the past.

I wasn't paying enough attention to what my heart was telling me. When I paid attention and got the message, I could move forward and heal.

As a therapist, I know that when you're vulnerable, the best way to move on is to admit your vulnerability, don't beat yourself up for it, and try to find a way to analyze your vulnerability. Pull up your socks and try to do better for you and your family.

To deny our pasts is to burn the bridge we must cross to self-understanding.

We cannot erase the past, but we can accept it as history.

I'm a big believer in the idea that while we are the sum of our tears, we are also the product of our choices in how we deal with those tears.

Lyrically and thematically, the title 'Doctor Faith', that song is about therapy, psychotherapy, and that song is about emotions and personal insight. I think all the songs on the record sort of go along with that.

But I think that your entire life is a process of sorting out some of those early messages that you got.

In order to heal others, we first need to heal ourselves. And to heal ourselves, we need to know how to deal with ourselves.

You can't heal what you don't acknowledge.

You realize yourself when you start reflecting - because I don't live in the past, although your past is so much a part of what you are - that you can't ignore it. But I don't look at scrapbooks.

Fortunately analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself still remains a very effective therapist.

Fear is a question. What are you afraid of and why? Our fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if we explore them.

Life unravels the way it does, and it has an effect on you, but you have to take responsibility for dealing with it.

You're always searching for the thing to heal you, and I thought therapy would give me that. But it didn't - it just helps you recognize your demons.

I'm a person that carries everything that happened to me in my past, with me into the future. I refuse to let it make me bitter. I still completely believe in love and I remain open to anything that will happen to me.

Fear is a driving force for most of the things that I do. I don't know if that's healthy.

My own being can be judged by the depths I reach in making these historical origins my own.

The background - your own history - is way more important than what you can achieve as a professional.

Therapy? I don't need that. The roles that I choose are my therapy.

One faces the future with one's past.

Fear is a question: What are you afraid of, and why? Just as the seed of health is in illness, because illness contains information, your fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if you explore them.

I was raised in an atmosphere of 'everything's fine.' But as I got older, I was like, 'Well no, everything's not fine. There is stuff that's sad.' I am a really sensitive person. I think I am too sensitive sometimes.

I love stories, and as I got older, I realized how important what happened yesterday is to how you try to make your present better.