The Castle in the Forest Quotes

“Prevarication, like honesty, is reflexive, and soon becomes a sturdy habit, as reliable as truth.”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“What enables devils to survive is that we are wise enough to understand that there are no answers—there are only questions.”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“I will now make an apology, although I will do my best not to repeat it. (Good readers do not read fiction, after all, to put up with the author’s regrets.) I will say that having read the best and worst of novels for many years, which is, to remind you, part of a good devil’s education, I know by now that not even a loyal reader can stay true to an author who is ready to leave his narrative for an apparently unrelated expedition.”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“The Creator had His relative successes and His abysmal failures. While it must be admitted that He never gave up, even if He was not always in firm control of the earth He had fashioned, it is also incontestable that earthquakes and ice ages brought many an interruption to His experiments and savaged many of His pursuits. Why? Because He had incorrectly designed this globe of earth in the first place.”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“As the Maestro is never loath to tell us, a human who suffers from too much ambition succeeds only in exemplifying the Creator’s own lack of anticipation. The D.K., wishing His Vision to be innovative, had created the human will as an instinct all but free of Him. Once again, God had miscalculated.”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“Sequestered in the depths of the average pacifist—as one will invariably discover—resides a killer. That is why the person has become a pacifist in the first place.”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“He does see Himself as the Divine Artist. Of course, He is also a blunderer—so many of His creations are botched. A good many are disasters which He then proceeds to plow back into the food chain. That is His only means of keeping His multitudinous, mediocre, and often meaningless spawnings from choking the existence of the rest. Yet, I will admit, He is dogged. He is still looking to improve His previous creations.”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“Repetition kills the soul.”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“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, The Castle in the Forest

“It is easy to comprehend people who are weaker than ourselves, but it is not as simple to be ready for the true feelings of those more powerful.”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“He was full of love—for himself, first, and his prowess—such a fine power at his age. Then, he felt a degree of love for her—”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“There remained a hole drilled through his heart.”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“It aroused my paranoia (which is always there in ready supply, since it is preferable to poor powers of anticipation).”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“Most statesmen who become successful leaders of a country at war have usually risen to such eminence already. They have installed in themselves an ability not to suffer sleepless nights because of casualties on the other side. They now possess the mightiest of all social engines of psychic numbification—patriotism!”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“The mark of a truly stupid man,” he announced to Klara, “is that he takes his own occupation so seriously that he comes to believe it is superior to others.”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“Think of how hot a fire must be to call out the will of iron that is in the ore. Iron is strong against every force except the one that made it into iron.”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“Since the sum of her experience had told her that the majority of one’s prayers to God were not answered, she prayed now directly to us, she called upon the Devil, she implored him.”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“Angels often flee from people who scream too loudly—they know at such moments how close the man or woman is to us, and they feel outnumbered. For devils rush in to attend such outcries.”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“When an officer of the law detects a vice in himself, he knows enough to start looking for its presence in others.”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“Alois did not know (or care that much) whether men and women had souls, but he was in no doubt about dogs. They did, and you had to be loyal to the soul of a dog.”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“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 her face. Alois Senior would attest to that. The female organ! Whoever designed this form had certainly been sly about the job. (This was about as close as Alois ever came to admiring the Creator.)”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“And with it all, he was proud of himself. He had brought his mother to tears. “Let her cry for once. Not me. It is time for her to learn.”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“All you need do is nod. I already know nine parts in ten of what he will say, but it is like fishing. Be patient, and you will get what you came for.”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“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 because a newly gained sophistication fades once a venture comes to an end. So we develop many new qualities of mind, but soon lose them.”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“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 chose.”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“Freaks can be a fount of information.”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“I will now make an apology, although I will do my best not to repeat it. (Good readers do not read fiction, after all, to put up with the author’s regrets.)”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“I live by the law of averages,” said Alois. “I prefer to think of the ongoing possibility of profit rather than of the intermittent perils that surround all activity.”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“She was over six months into her pregnancy, but they made love that night. Alois had known more than one woman who could even give you a good piece of the real business in that very last week before she would pop out someone else’s baby.”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“Casi todos nuestros clientes dejan de existir -¡no queda el alma!- o los reencarna el Dummkopf, al que no le gusta ceder a ninguna de sus criaturas, grandes o pequeñas, juiciosas o insensatas, lo cual puede que sea una razón de que el mundo esté cada vez más plagado de mediocridad.”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest