A little evil

INTERVIEWER

A large number of Americans today hold the notion that god and the devil are at work in their daily lives.

MAILER

I think they are. Not in a controlling sense – I don’t believe that the devil seizes you and you’re gone forever. But can you say that you’ve never had a fuck where you didn’t feel evil for a little while?

INTERVIEWER

A little angelic, maybe.

MAILER

No. A little evil. And I think that’s the answer.

Text extracted from an interview with Norman Mailer conducted by Andrew O’Hagan for The Paris Review, collected in The Paris Review Interviews, Volume III. You can read the full interview here.

The lithograph is Vampire II, by Edvard Munsch. I purchased a print while visiting the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in 2008. It hangs in my office above my reading chair.