He knew that again now. Hennessey's death had opened to Croft vistas of such omnipotence that he was afraid to consider it directly. All day the fact hovered about his head, tantalizing him with odd dreams and portents of power.

Norman Mailer The Naked and the Dead
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In "The Naked and the Dead," the protagonist, Croft, grapples with the implications of Hennessey's death. This event has unveiled a sense of unimaginable power that Croft had never anticipated, making him feel both exhilarated and anxious about what it may mean for him. The death acts as a catalyst, igniting a mix of hope and fear in Croft as he contemplates the possibilities that lie ahead.

As he navigates through...

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The Naked and the Dead
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Norman Mailer
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Other quotes in The Naked and the Dead

Margaret is kindled by it, exalted for a time, sees it as passion, glows and becomes rounded, but only for a time. After a year it is completely naked, apparent to her, that he is alone, that he fights out battles with himself upon her body, and something withers in her.

Norman Mailer The Naked and the Dead

lofting itself massively into the low-hanging clouds of the sky. In the early drab twilight it looked like an immense old gray elephant erecting himself somberly on his front legs, his haunches lost in the green bedding of his lair. The mountain seemed wise and powerful, and terrifying in its size. Gallagher stared at it in absorption, caught by a sense of beauty he could not express. The idea, the vision he always held of something finer and neater and more beautiful than the moil in which he lived trembled now, pitched almost to a climax of words. There

Norman Mailer The Naked and the Dead

She was a good girl, he said to himself. He was thinking without quite phrasing it that no other person had ever understood him so fully, and he felt a secret relief as he realized that she had understood him and still loved him.

Norman Mailer The Naked and the Dead

He had been given the job and he was going to do it. But now for the first time he hated it genuinely. Perhaps there had been too many fatigue-products, perhaps the cumulative labor had dissolved and reshaped the structures of his mind, but in any case he was wretched with this work, and as a corollary he understood suddenly that he had always hated the drudgery of his farm work, the unending monotonous struggle against an arid unyielding soil.

Norman Mailer The Naked and the Dead

If punishment is at all proportionate to the offense, then power becomes watered. The only way you generate the proper attitude of awe and obedience is through immense and disproportionate power.

Norman Mailer The Naked and the Dead

You men are a bunch of god-damned women.

Norman Mailer The Naked and the Dead
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All the things you can talk about in anyone's work are the things that are least important.

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Race of Cain, ascend to heaven, And cast God down upon the earth!

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Race of Cain, ascend to heaven, And cast God down upon the earth!

"Philip Sharpe was a soldier in God's army," says the minister. "Now he marches with the angels."

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"Philip Sharpe was a soldier in God's army," says the minister. "Now he marches with the angels."

For me the curse is a crutch, but the con is everything.

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For me the curse is a crutch, but the con is everything.

I don't have anything against God. Far from it. But I don't understand Him. And I don't trust a lot of the people that go around claiming that they're working in His best interests.

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I don't have anything against God. Far from it. But I don't understand Him. And I don't trust a lot of the people that go around claiming that they're working in His best interests.

Now that you're an adult, you might still feel a pang of guilt when you decline a dinner invitation in favor of a good book. Or maybe you like to eat alone in restaurants and could do without the pitying looks from fellow diners. Or you're told that you're "in your head too much," a phrase that's often deployed against the quiet and cerebral. Of course, there's another word for such people: thinkers.

Susan Cain Quiet: The Power of...
Now that you're an adult, you might still feel a pang of guilt when you decline a dinner invitation in favor of a good book. Or maybe you like to eat alone in restaurants and could do without the pitying looks from fellow diners. Or you're told that you're "in your head too much," a phrase that's often deployed against the quiet and cerebral. Of course, there's another word for such people: thinkers.
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