Biographers From The United States

"Well, I know … there’s strange things that happened, that don't seem … One of the buildings [in New York] came down that wasn't hit by a plane, so, you know, was it building seven or building 10?"

"[Bergen said the twin towers collapsed on top (of WTC7)] No, they didn't collapse on top of it. My offices were down there [at the bottom of Manhattan]. My offices were closed and you know … there's pictures of it collapsing. There's nothing collapsing on top of it. I mean, listen, I don't want to argue any theories about this because all I've heard is questions. I have no explanation. I have no knowledge of it. But ... what you’re repeating now, I know not to be true."

"It's not something that I, you know, any part of [it] I endorse one way or the other, but I do think that it ought to be permissible in this country to question official narratives."

"I'm here to declare myself an independent candidate for president of the United States."

"My position on abortion was that it should always be a woman's choice right up to the very end. In the ninth month, you're basically killing a child, right?"

"The DNC and its media organs engineered a surge of popularity for Vice President Harris based upon nothing. No policies, no interviews, no debates, only smoke and mirrors and balloons in a highly produced Chicago circus."

"I do interviews everyday. Everyone who asks gets to interview me. Sometimes I do 10 a day. President Trump also does many interviews. How could the Democrat Party choose a candidate who refuses to do an interview?"

"I was at the bottom of my class, I started doing heroin, I went to the top of my class. Suddenly I could sit still and read."

"Vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons."

"The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine."

"[On the issue of autism] These are kids who will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted. And we have to recognize we are doing this to our children, and we need to put an end to it."

"Wi-Fi radiation does all kinds of adverse things, including causing cancer."

"Wi-Fi radiation opens up your blood-brain barrier, so all these toxins that are in your body can now go into your brain.”"

"Trusting the experts is not a feature of either a science or democracy."

"And I said, ‘I’m not scared of a germ.’ You know, I used to snort cocaine off toilet seats."

"Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—Joe and Kathleen's brother and Maeve’s uncle—is part of this campaign to attack the institutions committed to reducing the tragedy of preventable infectious diseases. He has helped to spread dangerous misinformation over social media and is complicit in sowing distrust of the science behind vaccines."

"We stand behind him in his ongoing fight to protect our environment. However, on vaccines he is wrong. And his and others' work against vaccines is having heartbreaking consequences. The challenge for public health officials right now is that many people are more afraid of the vaccines than the diseases, because they've been lucky enough to have never seen the diseases and their devastating impact. But that’s not luck; it's the result of concerted vaccination efforts over many years."

"Those who delay or refuse vaccinations, or encourage others to do so, put themselves and others, especially children, at risk. It is in all our interests to make sure that immunizations reach every child on the globe through safe, effective and affordable vaccines. Everyone must communicate the benefits and safety of vaccines, and advocate for the respect and confidence of the institutions which make them possible. To do otherwise risks even further erosion of one of public health’s greatest achievements."

"Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment. Today's announcement is deeply saddening for us. We denounce his candidacy and believe it to be perilous for our country."

"We want an America filled with hope and bound together by a shared vision of a brighter future, a future defined by individual freedom, economic promise and national pride. We believe in Harris and Walz. Our brother Bobby's decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and our familiy hold most dear. It is a sad ending to a sad story."

""Hi. Bobby," Kennedy introduced himself. Another kid, tall, lanky, and handsome, was in the room. "This is my brother Joe." That is, Joseph P. Kennedy II, two years older, the future six-term Massachusetts congressman."

"He [RFK, Jr] poured out a line for me to sample, and handed me an inch-and-a-half length of plastic drinking straw. I snorted. We chatted for a minute. I paid him, I believe, $40 in cash. It was a lot of money, the equivalent of $300 today. But cocaine bought from a Kennedy accompanied by a Kennedy brother—the moment of glamour seemed worth it."

"Donald Trump, if he becomes president as Kennedy is now working to make happen, wants to start executing drug dealers."

"[T]he respite from anti-Semitism was doomed to end. Conspiracy theorists are drawn gravitationally to the Jews, and Kennedy was only able to defy it for so long before his natural and predetermined course set in."

"The issue with Kennedy is that he long ago entered his own curated world of pseudo-science, in which every respectable position was presumptively false, and every major world event presumptively engineered by secretive elites. This is a mental model that has no braking system."

"Robert F Kennedy Jr is the perfect Kennedy for the post-Trump era, because in many ways, the Kennedy family represents America: like them, the country looks great, is rich and generally has high ideals. But so much of the reputation of both has rested on a willingness to overlook their flaws and victims."

"Facebook and Instagram on Thursday removed the accounts of Children’s Health Defense, an organization led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that is one of the largest U.S. anti-vaccine groups, for spreading medical misinformation."

"In a statement, Mr. Kennedy said, "Facebook is acting here as a surrogate for the Federal government’s crusade to silence all criticism of draconian government policies." Children’s Health Defense is widely regarded as a symbol of the vaccine resistance movement. Last year, the organization was named one of the "Disinformation Dozen," which refers to the top 12 superspreaders of misinformation about Covid-19 on the internet, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate."

"Kennedy Jr. lacks Trump's political abilities, but he presents to his admirers the same proposition: I suffer on your behalf. For the faithful, every correction of their champion’s falsehoods, every criticism of the harm he is inflicting on others, is a further proof of his heroic self-sacrifice. Kennedy, who has enjoyed privileged access to the political and media elites since his childhood, paints himself as a victim of censorship by—who else?—the elites."

"I can't believe he's in charge of the nation's health ... When are people going to be outraged?"

"Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer who is the nephew of the former President John F. Kennedy, has become perhaps the most prominent voice of the anti-vaccine movement in the U.S. He has championed Judy Mikovits, a former researcher at the National Cancer Institute, who made a number of discredited assertions in a documentary called Plandemic. It was released on May 4, 2020, and raced across the internet with its sensational claims—among them, that Anthony Fauci and other researchers were responsible for the death of millions of AIDS victims who were given the wrong therapy, while the scientists reaped fabulous profits from the patents on the faulty medicines. (According to the British Medical Journal, Dr. Fauci’s colleague at NIAID, Dr. Clifford Lane, said he received about $45,000 from the patents; Fauci donated his entire portion to charity.) Mikovits asserts that SARS-CoV-2 was created in laboratories at the University of North Carolina, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Maryland, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, without offering proof or saying why they would do this. Boosted by QAnon and anti-vaccine advocates, Plandemic was liked, shared, or commented on nearly 2.5 million times on Facebook before it was taken down. The contest between science and conspiracy would constantly undermine efforts to coordinate a national response to the Covid-19 pandemic."

"Don't waste any Republican or Conservative votes on Junior. He's one of the most Liberal Lunatics ever to run for office."

"He's radical left; RFK Jr. is radical left. Reminds me of this fly that's driving me crazy up here. This fly is brutal. I don't like flies."

"So bad that FoxNews puts RFK Jr., considered the dumbest member of the Kennedy Clan, on their fairly conservative platform so much. Competitive networks don't want anything to do with him. He's a Radical Left Lunatic whose crazy Climate Change views make the Democrat's Green New Scam look Conservative."

"RFK Jr. is a Democrat ‘Plant,’ a Radical Left Liberal who’s been put in place in order to help Crooked Joe Biden, the Worst President in the History of the United States, get Re-Elected. A Vote for Junior’ would essentially be a WASTED PROTEST VOTE, that could swing either way, but would only swing against the Democrats if Republicans knew the true story about him. Junior’ is totally Anti-Gun, an Extreme Environmentalist who makes the Green New Scammers look Conservative, a Big Time Taxer and Open Border Advocate, and Anti-Military/Vet…"

"RFK, Jr., heroin addict, sex addict, anti-vaccination lunatic and aspiring architect of millions of deaths purged the CDC last night. He gutted the world’s premiere public-health agency in his endless quest to destroy vaccine science and plunge this nation into the Middle Ages."

"Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit."

"The energy of American Jewish writers was so charged, so buoyant, that for a time they appeared to dominate American fiction. But there was so little Jewish energy in this art that one could invent parlor games over the ethnic or religious identity of its authors: Edna Ferber? Waldo Frank? Lillian Hellman? Nathanael West? Norman Mailer? E. L. Doctorow?"

"He was interesting, because he was interested. … I went to Provincetown a year or two ago and stayed with him and Norris. It was very pleasant. He was in good form. We both dislike the same things about our native land so we had lots to talk about."

"Mailer is no Balzac of the twentieth century. And he is engrossed in his own grim effort of self-validation...Mailer's adversary disposition recalls D. H. Lawrence, his predecessor in the line of literary minds dedicated to the renovation of society by means of a revolution in the individual consciousness. But of the two, Lawrence is actually closer to our present literary spirit, for he is not only the more subjective writer but also the more abstract."

"One night, we had a dinner party for the express purpose of introducing Mailer to Neil Gaiman. Neil, as was his habit, was so charming that Norman wanted to read The Sandman. He liked the series enough to provide a cover blurb for the next trade paperback collection. Neil later reported that bookstore buyers told him that the Mailer quote persuaded them to stock graphic novels. And the rest, as they say, is history."

"The crazy uncle of American literature … endearing and obnoxious, graceful and loutish, shrewd and clueless … his own biggest fan and his own worst enemy."

"He could do anything he wanted to do — the movie business, writing, theater, politics. He never thought the boundaries were restricted. He'd go anywhere and try anything. He was a courageous person, a great person, fully confident, with a great sense of optimism."

"In high school, I'd devoured the works of Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and Norman Mailer, moved by stories of men trying to find their place in an America that didn't welcome them. Later, studying the early civil rights movement in college, I'd been intrigued by the influence of Jewish philosophers like Martin Buber on Dr. King's sermons and writings."

"In the beginning, Mailer spins publicity for convict and murderer Jack Abbott, helps get Abbott's prison book published and Abbott paroled. The con with the prose style of a Doberman (all speed and teeth) obeys his muse again. Six weeks after parole, Abbott kills a man in New York City's East Village. … It was common to hear New Yorkers say that he should be tried as an accessory to murder. Mailer barged around giving interviews and suing a newspaper for libel, looking truculent and stricken. In one way it was unfair: Mailer had had the courage to sponsor a talented pariah, and then something in Abbott's transition from prison went disastrously wrong. Mailer was personally aggrieved and pained, not only for Abbott but for Abbott's victim. It is true that certain writers adopt convicts: criminals, sinister, romantic and stupid as sharks, become the executive arms of intellectuals' violent fantasies. For some reason, intellectuals rarely understand that they are being conned: convicts are geniuses of ingratiation. Still, Mailer after all was not promoting a killer but a prose stylist and what he judged to be a salvageable human being. He miscalculated: he overrated the writer in Abbott and underestimated the murderer."

"I was inventing it as I went along. And I didn't know where I was going to end up, and I did not have a large shape in mind. I felt that I was making the path as I was going along. I like Armies of the Night, Norman Mailer writing the novel as history, history as novel. I teach Armies of the Night; I use it to show students how we make history in the same way we write a novel. And as we narrate what's going on, we shape history. I also like that book a lot because he writes about the responsibility of the writer. Does the writer actually go out in the street and perform politics and"

"men write about their life all the time. You know, Norman Mailer would put himself in his books, and no one made it seem that he was doing something less."

"He had such a compendious vision of what it meant to be alive. He had serious opinions on everything there was to have an opinion on, and everything he had was so original."

"We would talk about everything … He knew he wasn't going to live very much longer, but he would still talk of taking on the greatest subjects. He always was working on something."

"Norman was a splendid, surprising American writer, a good friend, a true New Yorker, and a man we will all miss. To me, it's like a thousand people just left the room. As a novelist, he never repeated himself, never succumbed to the temptation to write "The Naked and the Dead Go to Japan," and always made us imagine other lives, other choices, other varieties of human folly, grandeur and capacity for evil."