“ His decision had been made in the valley, and it lay as an iron warp in his mind. He could have turned back no more easily than he could have killed himself. Norman Mailer
“ For the first time in civilized history, perhaps for the first time in all of history, we have been forced to live with the suppressed knowledge that the smallest facets of our personality or the most… Norman Mailer
“ About a week after they had come back, a load of mail came to the island. They were the first letters the men had received in several weeks, and for a night it relieved the changeless pattern of their… Norman Mailer
“ Where, in what cemetery of the heavens, did the tender words of lovers rest when they loved no longer? Norman Mailer
“ There was the old myth of divine intervention. You blasphemed, and a lightning bolt struck you. That was a little steep too. If punishment is at all proportionate to the offense, then power becomes wa… Norman Mailer
“ There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same. Norman Mailer
“ There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow old or else pay more for remaining the same. Norman Mailer
“ Since he had, in contrast to his delivery, a big burly squared-off bulk of a body which gave hint of the methodical ruthlessness of more than one Russian bureaucrat, Von Braun’s relatively small voice… Norman Mailer
“ Since I believe that I have been a devil for many centuries and have risen in rank and been demoted, it could be asked why, with such a history, I still learned a good deal while in Russia. It is beca… Norman Mailer
“ Roth was irritated. Just because he was a Jew too, they always assumed he felt the same way about things. It made him feel a little frustrated. No doubt some of his bad luck had come because he was on… Norman Mailer
“ Piety can also serve as a wall to keep the pious from recognizing how profoundly angry they are at God—this God who has failed to treat them by what they see as their proper right. Norman Mailer
“ Nothing could be better than the moment when a woman opened her legs for you. That first time! If you had an eye for the little differences, you knew twice as much about her as you could learn from he… Norman Mailer
“ If men could move out of infancy at half a mile an hour and get up to eighteen thousand miles an hour in one lifetime, well, who was to assume that the walls of the universe were safe from future men? Norman Mailer
“ I am not here only so that the blind might see, but to teach those who thought they could see that they are blind Norman Mailer
“ He had been certain that religion was there for a very good practical reason. It couldn’t be simpler—you had to keep the weak and unruly in order. But a man of pride (such as himself) could do as he c… Norman Mailer
“ For if we are our own force, we are also a servant of the forces of the dead. So we have to be bold enough to live with all the magical forces at loose between the living and the dead. That is never f… Norman Mailer
