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The Executioner's Song QUOTES

The Executioner's Song QUOTES

1 " 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 , The Executioner's Song

2 " 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 , The Executioner's Song

3 " 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 , The Executioner's Song

4 " Brenda was six when she fell out of the apple tree. "

― Norman Mailer , The Executioner's Song

5 " 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 , The Executioner's Song

6 " 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 , The Executioner's Song

7 " but I am infinitely more sorrowful about the two victims’ families than the fact Mr. Gilmore is no longer alive. "

― Norman Mailer , The Executioner's Song

8 " When you start to open a door, the pressure has to be greatest in the beginning, yet the door moves the least. "

― Norman Mailer , The Executioner's Song

9 " I’m not saying its right to break the law. I’m not talkin about that—but these prisons as they exist are wrong. "

― Norman Mailer , The Executioner's Song

10 " 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 , The Executioner's Song

11 " This business of living for eternity certainly contributed to capital punishment, brutality, and war. "

― Norman Mailer , The Executioner's Song

12 " You could easily do away with a lot of jails. They’re shit. They breed, they don’t deter, crime. "

― Norman Mailer , The Executioner's Song

13 " It was as if he was saying good-bye to a man who was going to step into a cannon and be fired to the moon, or dropped in an iron chamber to the bottom of the sea, a veritable Houdini. He grasped both of Gilmore’s hands and it didn’t matter if the man was a murderer, he could just as well have been a saint, for either at this moment seemed equally beyond Schiller’s way of measure—and he said, he heard it come out of him, “I don’t know what I’m here for. "

― Norman Mailer , The Executioner's Song

14 " What have we accomplished? There aren’t going to be less murders. "

― Norman Mailer , The Executioner's Song

15 " The thought Nicole really wanted to lose was that there was no more Gary. It was a possibility she did not like to consider. It was too depressing to believe he might not be on the other side. "

― Norman Mailer , The Executioner's Song

16 " Campbell believed the prison system was a complete socialist way of life. No wonder Gilmore had gotten into trouble. For twelve years, a prison had told him when to go to bed and when to eat, what to wear and when to get up. It was absolutely diametrically opposed to the capitalist environment. Then one day they put the convict out the front door, told him today is magic, at two o’clock you are a capitalist. Now, do it on your own. Go out, find a job, get up by yourself, report to work on time, manage your money, do all the things you were taught not to do in prison. Guaranteed to fail. Eighty percent went back to jail. "

― Norman Mailer , The Executioner's Song

17 " Bessie could not keep from thinking, “His nightmare will be over, but mine will never be. "

― Norman Mailer , The Executioner's Song

18 " You have to know you can take a human life before you ever put on a police uniform. "

― Norman Mailer , The Executioner's Song

19 " This business of living for eternity certainly contributed to capital punishment, brutality, and war. Why, Brigham Young with his countless wives pining on the vine had the gall to state that if you discovered one of your women in adultery, it would behoove you as a good and Christian act to hold her on your lap and run a knife through her breast. That way she’d have her whack at the hereafter. "

― Norman Mailer , The Executioner's Song

20 " Meanwhile, a turkey dinner with all the trimmings was the highlight of Christmas Day at Utah State Prison where Gilmore is in isolation for disciplinary reasons. "

― Norman Mailer , The Executioner's Song