LENNON: At the end of Ancient Evenings, Meni the Second says, “Purity and goodness are less to Osiris than strength.” Add to that Rojack's belief [in An American Dream] that “God was not love but courage. Love came only as a reward.” In Christian belief, love can move mountains. But for you, love seems to be more of a passive quality. It's the emolument you get for being courageous.

MAILER: Let me tell you how I got to that point. It struck me that everyone I knew, including myself, was always looking for love. “Ah, if I could find love, it would solve my problems.” Some years ago, however, I found myself saying to my children, “Don't go searching for love. Love is not a solution but a reward.” So long as you go searching for love directly, you will fail. Because love is a grace, and you don't pursue grace. Now, mind you, I'm not a macho maniac on courage. More than once I've said that an old lady who crosses a busy street in terror, feeling she hardly has a 50-50 chance of making it safely across, is exhibiting courage that might be more intense than that of a soldier attacking a machinegun nest, if through all his manhood he's been ready to die in such an action.

Still, my own experience tells me that to the degree one is brave, one finds more love than when one is cowardly.

But I'm not talking about romantic love, rather about what Christianity calls “charity.”

Norman Mailer

Pugnacious novelist whose turbulent private life sometimes overshadowed his substantial literary achievements

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Charity comes when you're brave. How many cowards are full of charity? Cowardice is a poison.

It's a question of precedence. You always put courage as the more active, the more powerful—

I often find when I'm feeling weak that I'm also very nice, and when I'm weak I feel the weakness in others and am sympathetic to it. But it's not nourishing. It can be just another form of emptiness. Whereas when I'm feeling strong and also feel compassion or charity — on those rare occasions — there's real goodness present. It's of real use to the other person.

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