Bob Minzeheimer about Norman and marriage: "In recent years, he mellowed but said, "I've always felt my relationship to the United States is analogous to a marriage. I love this country. I hate it. I get angry by it. I feel close to it. I'm charmed by it. I'm repelled by it."
Source: Bob Minzeheimer, "Author Norman Mailer dies at 84", USAToday.com, 11/10/2007.
Charles McGrath about Norman's marriage to Norris: "Chastened perhaps, and stabilized by his marriage to Ms. Church, a former model whom he wed in November 1980, Mr. Mailer mellowed and even turned sedate."
Source: Charles McGrath, "Norman Mailer, Towering Writer With a Matching Ego, Dies at 84", NYTimes.com, 11/11/2007.
Bob Minzesheimer about Norman and Norris: "People only get domesticated when they meet their equal," he said. The couple spent most of the last decade in their waterfront home in Provincetown, leading what he called "an abstemious life."
Source: Bob Minzeheimer, "Author Norman Mailer dies at 84", USAToday.com, 11/10/2007.
Carl Rollyson: "Farbar admire Mailer for getting on so well with three of his four ex-wives. It seemed so civilized of Mailer to have kept them as friends. For Mailer, it meant acknowleding the love he had felt for these women, who he believed had also loved him. although the marriages had failed for different reasons, he had shared with his ex-wives a desire to honor unions that had brought forth children." Source: Carl E. Rollyson, The Lives of Norman Mailer: A Biography, page 263.
Norris about their marriage:
"I spend most of my days in New York now. Norman goes back and forth between here and Provincetown on Cape Cod. He likes it there because it's so quiet, he can work better. But it is a little too quiet for me ... Norman and I eat breakfast separately, each reading our paper in different rooms. We're both very solitary. He's got his room and I have mine, and we don't really get on each other's toes ... Norman and I eat lunch at different times. We do talk during the day, but he likes to keep his thoughts on his work, so unless it is something special we don't chat a lot ... Norman and I always meet at 6 and have a glass of wine and talk. We'll have dinner together, at home or out. It's nice, almost like having a date. At night he watches TV and I read."
Source: Katherine Kingsley, "Norris Church Mailer Interview", Sunday times of London, 08/26/2007.
Carl Rollyson: "Marriage and family had always been important to him, but only with Norris had he been faithful to his vision of the family man." Source: Carl E. Rollyson, The Lives of Norman Mailer: A Biography, page 349.
Carl Rollyson: "By the end of 1980, Mailer settled his turbulent personal life in a typical Maileresque way: He married and divorced Carol Stevens and then married Norris Church, a painter and model he met in Arkansas while visiting an army buddy. Now the father of eight children, Mailer seemed more secure and less intent on proving his competitive strength in all matters literary and sexual."
Source: Carl Rollyson, "Norman Mailer, American Novelist, Dies at 84", NYSun.com
