INTERVIEWER: Do you remember where you were when you heard Hemingway had killed himself?

MAILER: I remember it very well… I was truly aghast. A certain part of me has never really gotten over it. In a way, it was a huge warning. What he was saying is, Listen all you novelists out there. Get it straight: when you’re a novelist you’re entering on an extremely dangerous psychological journey, and it can blow up in your face.

— Norman Mailer The Art of Fiction No. 193 The Paris Review

INTERVIEWER: Might it be said… that writing is a sort of self-annihilation?

MAILER: It uses you profoundly. There’s simply less of you after you finish a book… Yet if you’re writing a good novel then you’re being an explorer—you’re getting into something where you don’t know the end, where the end is not given. There’s a mixture of dread and excitement that keeps you going. To my mind, it’s not worth writing a novel unless you’re tackling something where your chances of success are open. You can fail. You’re gambling with your psychic reserves.

— Norman Mailer The Art of Fiction No. 193 The Paris Review