Thank you, Mr Mailer
“Novelists are oxymorons. They are sensitive and insensitive. Full of heart and heartless. You have to be full of heart to feel what other people are feeling. On the other hand, if you start thinking of all the damage you are going to do, you can’t write the book - not if you’re reasonably decent….Either you produce a book that doesn’t approach what really interests you or, if you go to the root with all you’ve got, there is no way you won’t injure family, friends, and innocent bystanders.” Norman Mailer in The New Yorker, Dec 2002
