Harlot's Ghost Quotes

“Bright was the light of my last martini on my moral horizon”
― Norman Mailer, Harlot's Ghost

“Sometimes I think our future existence will depend on whether we can keep false information from proliferating too rapidly. If our power to verify the facts does not keep pace, then distortions of information will eventually choke us.”
― Norman Mailer, Harlot's Ghost

“I cannot bear that chirpy Bobby Kennedy, always building his beaver's nest with a few more facts. He needs to look into the abyss.”
― Norman Mailer, Harlot's Ghost

“He had also been married to an English girl who was killed in a car accident, a fact to mention because he was the driver. His sorrow was complete; it was as if he had been dipped into a tragic rue. This loss permeated every pore and organ cell, left him, indeed, a complete man, all of one piece, one whole tincture of loss. He spoke in a gentle voice and listened to every word that everyone said, as if words were as much of a comfort as warm clothing. While he sipped his one beer and I had three,”
― Norman Mailer, Harlot's Ghost

“Certain kinds of honor could not be lost without demanding that one consecrate oneself thereafter—no matter how unsuited and unprepared—to a life of revenge. I”
― Norman Mailer, Harlot's Ghost

“What if there are not only two nostrils, two eyes, two lobes, and so forth, but two psyches as well, and they are separately equipped? They go through life like Siamese twins inside one person. Everything that happens to one, happens to the other. If one gets married, the other is along for the ride. Otherwise, they are different. They can be just a little different, like identical twins, or they can be vastly different, like good and evil.” She stopped for a nearer example. “Or optimism and pessimism.”
― Norman Mailer, Harlot's Ghost

“Great people, and artists, and extraordinary men and women have dramatically different Alpha and Omega. Of course, so do the feebleminded, the addictive, and the psychotic.” Something in the certainty of her voice was making me dogged. “How do you account, then,” I asked, “for the difference between an artist and a psychotic?” “The quality of inner communication, of course. If Alpha and Omega are incredibly different, but can manage all the same to express their separate needs and perceptions to each other, then you have an extraordinary person. Such people can find exceptional solutions. Artists, especially. You see, when Alpha and Omega don’t communicate, then one or the other must become the master or there’s a standstill. So the loser becomes oppressed. That’s a desperately inefficient way of living.” “Like totalitarianism?” “Precisely.”
― Norman Mailer, Harlot's Ghost

“There seems to be endless capacity for strife in your system.” “Of course there is. Doesn’t that fit human nature?”
― Norman Mailer, Harlot's Ghost

“Sometimes I think our future existence will depend on whether we can keep false information from proliferating too rapidly. If our power to verify the facts does not keep pace, then distortions of information”
― Norman Mailer, Harlot's Ghost

“Vanity, complacency, and indolence were a curse, since bravery was an ascending slope and one could not rest on it. One must succeed in rising to every challenge except the ones that would destroy us needlessly.”
― Norman Mailer, Harlot's Ghost

“The aim of these gatherings is to acquaint you with the factology of facts. One has to know whether one is dealing with the essential or the circumferential fact. Historical data, after all, tend to be not particularly factual and subject to revision by later researchers. You must look to start, therefore, with the fact that cannot be smashed into sub-particles of fact.”
― Norman Mailer, Harlot's Ghost

“You can say the universe is a splendidly worked-up system of disinformation calculated to make us believe in evolution and so divert us away from God. Yes, that is exactly what I would do if I were the Lord and could not trust”
― Norman Mailer, Harlot's Ghost

“For it’s exactly when we come closest to another, that we are turned away with a lie, and blunder forward to comprehend ourselves on the misperceptions of the past.”
― Norman Mailer, Harlot's Ghost

“I was in love with a beautiful, brilliant girl who was married to the most elegant and incisive gent I had ever met; there was no hope for me but, oh, the love was beautiful. Mr.”
― Norman Mailer, Harlot's Ghost

“Happiness is experienced most directly in the intervals between terror.”
― Norman Mailer, Harlot's Ghost

“I’ve never been to the Playboy mansion,” he wrote, “but Thyme Hill must make Hugh Hefner look like a spinster having a few lady friends in for tea.” He”
― Norman Mailer, Harlot's Ghost

“I heard her calling to me from caverns so deep in herself she was never aware of her own voice.”
― Norman Mailer, Harlot's Ghost