The World Motivation
If someone asks me to go to speak at, say, Princeton, I might or might not go. But if someone asks me from Norman, Oklahoma, I certainly will go.
“If someone asks me to go to speak at, say, Princeton, I might or might not go. But if someone asks me from Norman, Oklahoma, I certainly will go.”
— Simon Schama · Norman
If someone asks me to go to speak at, say, Princeton, I might or might not go. But if someone asks me from Norman, Oklahoma, I certainly will go.
The Jews invented a portable religion in the shape of the Bible, the Torah, and eventually the Talmud, and with other portable forms of writing. So it's now possible to carry the religion, that is embedded in that writing, away from the ruins of political and military power.
I am somebody who has never been able to give up '60s habits. I am the inevitable old codger on the dance floor.
The default mode of modern writing about art is to despise any notion of singularity as so much overheated genius-fetishism.
How could you not love Norman Mailer? He was a total chauvinist, but also so vulnerable.
Norman Parke needs to stay off of Twitter before he gets himself in a fight he can't win.
Me and Norman Mailer have talked about how hard it is in America to get better. Especially at writing.
I went to Norman High then I walked across the street after that and went to college. That's my home town, that's where I'm from. Physically I'm a Texan, but I'm an Oklahoman.
My father grew up in a Norman Rockwell postcard. His mother was a stay-at-home mom, his father was a rural mailman, they had six kids.
It takes a perverse determination to drain that instinctive curiosity away and make history seem just remote, dead and disconnected from our contemporary reality. Conversely, it just takes skilful storytelling to recharge that connection to make the past come alive in our present.