Author: Norman Mailer

Cites

• James Joyce (1)
  • IN: The Spooky Art (2003) Reference, American
    EPIGRAPH: He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side glances. He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself...
    FROM: A Painful Case, (1914), Short story, Ireland
• Henry David Thoreau (1)
  • IN: The Spooky Art (2003) Reference, American
    EPIGRAPH: I was never so rapid in my virtue but my vice kept up with me. We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke straps our vice.
    FROM: Journals, (1961), Journal, US
• W. B. Yeats (1)
  • IN: Ancient Evenings (1983) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: I believe in the practice and philosophy of what we have agreed to call magic, in what I must call the evocation of spirits, though I do not know what they are, in the power of creating magical illusions, in the visions of truth in the depths of the mind when the eyes are closed; and I believe... that the borders of our mind are ever shifting, and that many minds can flow into one another, as it were, and create or reveal a single mind, a single energy... and that our memories are part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself.
    FROM: Ideas of Good and Evil, (1903), Poem, Ireland
• Andre Gide (1)
  • IN: The Deer Park (1955) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Please do not understand me too quickly.
    FROM: Autumn Leaves, (1950), Book, France
• Mouffle D'Angerville (1)
  • IN: The Deer Park (1955) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: ...the Deer Park, that gorge of innocence and virtue in which were engulfed so many victims who when they returned to society brought with them depravity, debauchery and all the vices they naturally acquired from the infamous officials of such a place. Apart from the evil which this dreadful place did to the morals of the people, it is horrible to calculate the immense sums of money it cost the state. Indeed who can reckon the expense of that band of pimps and madames who were constantly searching all the corners of the kingdom to discover the objects of their investigation; the costs of conveying the girls to their destination; of polishing them, dressing them, perfuming them, and furnishing them with all the means of seduction that art could provide. To this must be added the gratuities presented to those who were not successful in arousing the jaded passions of the sultan but had nonetheless to be paid for their submissino, for their discretion, and still more for their being eventually despised.
    FROM: vie privee de louis xv, (1781), NULL, France
• Bible (1)
  • IN: Harlot's Ghost (1991) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: For we wrestle, not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
    FROM: Ephesians, 6:12, (100), Bible, NULL
• Sir. Vanbrugh, John (1)
  • IN: Harlot's Ghost (1991) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: BELINDA: Ay, but you know we must return good for evil. LADY BRUTE: That may be a mistake in the translation.
    FROM: The Provoked Wife, (1697), Play, UK
• Theodore Roethke (1)
  • IN: Harlot's Ghost (1991) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire. My Soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
    FROM: In a Dark Time, (1960), Poem, US
• James Elroy Flecker (1)
  • IN: Tough Guys Don't Dance (1984) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Is it the mist or the dead leaves? Or the dead men -- November eves?
    FROM: November Eves, (1915), Poem, UK
• Edwin Arlington Robinson (1)
  • IN: Tough Guys Don't Dance (1984) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: There are mistakes too monstrous for remorse....
    FROM: NULL, (None), NULL, US

Cited by

• Stephen Hunter (1)
  • IN: Dirty White Boys (1994) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: There is a paradox at the core of penology, and from it derives the thousand ills and afflictions of the prison system. It is that not only the worst of the young are sent to prison, but the best—that is, the proudest, the bravest, the most daring, the most enterprising and the most undefeated of the poor. There starts the horror.
    FROM: Norman Mailer's introduction to In the Belly of the Beast by Jack Henry Abbott, (1981), Book, US
• John Lawton (1)
  • IN: Sweet Sunday (2002) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: It takes a long time for sentiments to collect into action, and often they never do... I wanted to make actions rather than effect sentiments.
    FROM: Paris Review Interview, (1964), Interview, US
• Richard T. Kelly (1)
  • IN: The Knives (2016) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: There's a story I used to tell years ago where I'd say, if I were a revolutionary leader, and they came up to me and they said, "We've got a dilemma, we don't know whether to execute these five men or cut down these five trees." I'd say, "Well, let me look at them."
    FROM: NULL, (1997), Interview, US
• Stephen King (1)
  • IN: 11/22/63 (2011) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: It is virtually not assimilable to our reason that a small lonely man felled a giant in the midst of his limousines, his legions, his throng, and his security. If such a nonentity destroyed the leader of the most powerful nation on earth, then a world of disproportion engulfs us, and we live in a universe that is absurd.
    FROM: Oswald's Tale: An American History, (1995), Book, US
• Jay McInerney (1)
  • IN: The Last of the Savages (1996) Fiction, NULL
    EPIGRAPH: ...one is a rebel or one conforms, one is a frontiers-man in the Wild West of American night life, or else a Square cell, trapped in the totalitarian tissues of American society, doomed willy-nilly to conform if one is to succeed.
    FROM: NULL, (None), NULL, US