Norman Mailer Quotes

Down to their innate molecular core, cancer cells are hyperactive, survival-endowed, scrappy, fecund, inventive copies of ourselves.

He was a clot looking for a place to happen, a splinter of bone hunting a soft organ to puncture, a lonely lunatic cell looking for a mate - they would set up housekeeping and raise themselves a cozy little malignant tumor.

Astonishingly, in spite of decades of research, there is no agreed theory of cancer, no explanation for why, inside almost all healthy cells, there lurks a highly efficient cancer subroutine that can be activated by a variety of agents - radiation, chemicals, inflammation and infection.

Cancer cells have had so many other things go wrong with them, genetic, non-genetic changes, that those cells, one of the things they then get selected for is that they have lots of telomerase because now the telomeres in those cells get maintained.

Cancer is the growth of madness denied.

So even though I couldn't bear writing about cancer, I faced it every day.

The tiny madman in his padded cell.

If you inhale a millionth of a gram of plutonium, the surrounding cells receive a very, very high dose. Most die within that area, because it's an alpha emitter. The cells on the periphery remain viable. They mutate, and the regulatory genes are damaged. Years later, that person develops cancer. Now, that's true for radioactive iodine, that goes to the thyroid; cesium-137, that goes to the brain and muscles; strontium-90 goes to bone, causing bone cancer and leukemia.

We're fighting internal struggles, I am the cancer for my own cure.

Cancer is not something confined to human beings. It's found in all multi cellular organisms where the adult cells proliferate, so it's widespread in the biosphere. It's a phenomenon that is deeply related to the history of life itself, so by studying cancer I think we can illuminate the history of life itself and vice versa.

And men, whose reason long was blind, From cells of madness unconfined, Oft lose whole years of darker mind.

Cancer is like another form of life. It's closely related to healthy life. A healthy body is one form of life. Cancer is in a way nature's experiment with life.

Only cells that had been transformed by a virus or a genetic mutation had the potential to become immortal.

There are little thoughts in your head that can grow until they eat your entire mind. Just tiny little thoughts--they are like a cancer, there is no telling what triggers the spread, or who will be struck, and why some get it and others are spared.

I know what cancer was. How is it like humankind?" Sek Hardeen's perfectly modulated, softly accented tones showed a hint of agitation. "We have spread out through the galaxy like cancer cells through a living body, Duré. We multiply without thought to the countless life forms that must die or be pushed aside so that we may breed and flourish. We eradicate competing forms of intelligent life.

In anything that does cover the whole of your life - in your philosophy and your religion - you must have mirth. If you do not have mirth you will certainly have madness.

Who says I'm insane?" "Oh you're sane alright. You're so sane, you scare me. You're so sane, it's insane.

Marijuana makes the best bio-diesel fuel on the planet, so it can make you energy. It grows 15 feet a summer, so it's a renewable resource. It makes better paper than wood does. It makes clothing. Medical-wise, it's stopping seizures, it's working for post-traumatic stress, they're even finding that it's curing cancer in certain cases. I mean, this is a remarkable plant. Now, for those that smoke it recreationally, to feel good, what's wrong with that? That's mental health.

Every human being should keep alive within them the sacred flame of madness, but should behave as a normal person.

Knowing that you're crazy doesn't make the crazy things stop happening.

Manufacture dooms in your head and you will go mad. Reality is incontravertible. Also, it will not be anticipated.

Its like if you take acid, it burns out brain cells and they dont regrow. Rock is like that-it has killed beautiful people musically, physically and mentally.

Increasingly I felt as if I were entering a struggle that might even be more than life and death. It might be a struggle for my soul, my essence, or whatever part of me might have reference to the eternal. There are worse things than death, I suspected... so far the word demon had never been spoken among the scientists and doctors who were working with me...Alone at night I worried about the legendary cunning of demons ...At the very least I was going stark, raving mad.

When a condition or a problem becomes too great, humans have the protection of not thinking about it. But it goes inward and minces up with a lot of other things already there and what comes out is discontent and uneasiness, guilt and a compulsion to get something--anything--before it is all gone.

One of the big tensions in my life is that I have known the stresses of financial hardship since I was a little kid, and it is the cancer for which I am seeking a cure.