“Historical, religious, and existential treatises suggest that for some persons at some times, it is rational not to avoid physical death at all costs. Indeed the spark of humanity can maximize its essence by choosing an alternative that preserves the greatest dignity and some tranquility of mind.”
― Norman Mailer, quote from The Executioner's Song
“but when the call came from Shirley Pedler to help in organizing the Utah Coalition Against the Death Penalty, she knew she would go out in the world again with her freaky blond hair, blond to everyone’s disbelief—at the age of fifty-four, go out in her denims and chin-length-hanging-down-straight vanilla hair to that Salt Lake world where nobody would ever make the mistake of thinking she was a native Utah lady inasmuch as Utah was the Beehive State. The girls went big for vertical hair-dos, pure monuments to shellac.”
― Norman Mailer, quote from The Executioner's Song
“He did a terrible thing and eliminating him would have left the world tidier. Or so goes the logic of the last fifty years of American justice. We throw away flawed people, people who have made terrible mistakes, with regularity and great alacrity. We jail drug dealers for decades, and we execute killers. We want them away. Out of sight.”
― Norman Mailer, quote from The Executioner's Song
“Brenda was six when she fell out of the apple tree.”
― Norman Mailer, quote from The Executioner's Song
“It was getting to be the best conversation she ever had. She had always thought the only way to have conversations like that was in your head. Then”
― Norman Mailer, quote from The Executioner's Song
“It was better than floods of misery that a son of her flesh had killed the sons of other mothers. That burned in her heart like the pain which flared in the arthritis of her knees. Pain was a boring conversationalist who never stopped, just found new topics. Bess”
― Norman Mailer, quote from The Executioner's Song
“Then the Warden said, “Do you have anything you’d like to say?” and Gary looked up at the ceiling and hesitated, then said, “Let’s do it.” That was it. The most pronounced amount of courage, Vern decided, he’d ever seen, no quaver, no throatiness, right down the line.”
― Norman Mailer, quote from The Executioner's Song
“Finally he said, “I like everything that wild Irish maniac, J. P. Donleavy, ever wrote.” It wasn’t so much a discussion as a sharing of taste. He also liked The Agony and the Ecstasy and Lust for Life by Irving Stone.”
― Norman Mailer, quote from The Executioner's Song
“When you start to open a door, the pressure has to be greatest in the beginning, yet the door moves the least.”
― Norman Mailer, quote from The Executioner's Song
“Gary Mark Gilmore: Go down on me, partner... I need it
Nicole Baker: Don't call me partner.
Gary Mark Gilmore: No, darlin'... I love it... I love it
Nicole Baker: Yeah, you and seven other motherfuckers.”
― Norman Mailer, quote from The Executioner's Song
Norman Mailer
Born place: in Long Branch, New Jersey, The United States
Born date January 31, 1923
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“The person staring back at me was a stranger. Someone who had taken the girl I was two years ago and stripped her down only to rebuild a different person. Now I was strong, I was capable and smart. They were the good qualities. But I was also calculated, manipulative and selfish. These were the things I promised myself I wouldn't be. After I found him. After we put this right.”
― Jessica Shirvington, quote from Disruption
“What exactly is the difference between a dream and waking experience? What happens to the sense of “I” in dreamless sleep? And they sought invariants: in the constantly changing flow of human experience, is there anything that remains the same? In the constantly changing flow of thought, is there an observer who remains the same? Is there any thread of continuity, some level of reality higher than waking, in which these states of mind cohere?”
― quote from The Upanishads: Translations from the Sanskrit
“You’ll have your heart cut out with a grapefruit knife; love does that. You won’t have a chance against me until you’re very old, if then.”
― Charles Baxter, quote from The Feast of Love
“He called me Jess because that is the name of the hood which restrains the falcon.
I was his falcon. I hung on his arm and fed at his hand.
He said my nose was sharp and cruel and that my eyes had madness in them. He said I would tear him to pieces if he dealt softly with me.
At night, if he was away, he had me chained to our bed. It was a long chain, long enough for me to use the chamber pot or to stand at the window and wait for the late owls. I love to hear the owls. I love to see the sudden glide of wings spread out for prey, and then the dip and the noise like a lover in pain.
He used the chain when we went riding together. I had a horse as strong as his, and he’d whip the horse from behind and send it charging through the trees, and he’d follow, half a head behind, pulling on the chain and asking me how I liked my ride.
His game was to have me sit astride him when we made love and hold me tight in the small of my back. He said he had to have me above him, in case I picked his eyes out in the faltering candlelight.
I was none of these things, but I became them.
At night, in June I think, I flew off his wrist and tore his liver from his body, and bit my chain in pieces and left him on the bed with his eyes open.
He looked surprised, I don’t know why. As your lover describes you, so you are.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Sexing the Cherry
“This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from A Grief Observed
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Two Years Before the...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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