my mail will not quit

Hit Command-Option-Esc, select Mail, and Force Quit. Why it may not quit could be for any reason. I would fix Permissions as soon as you can.

What do you mean about fixing permissions?

I have a similar problem. My Mac Mail cancels my shut down every time I forget to quit or force quit Mail b4 I shut down. I manually shut down whenever I know I won't be using my MacBook Pro for the next 8 hours or more, and 95% of the time Mac Mail cancels the shut down b/c it fails to quit.

Do I need to fix something in permissions? Or is there some other way to solve this problem?

This might be of help: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1606234

I have a similar problem with Mail, but repairing disk permissions did not help.

This might be useful - check out the post by Simpleton1972

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3205668

If you are still interested in repairing disk permissions:

1. open disk utility

if you don't know where disk utility resides: applications -> utilities

or in finder use shift-command-U to open utilities folder

2. in the left hand column of the window, select the drive on which your OS resides

3. click on the "repair disk permissions" in the bottom middle of the window

more about disk permissions:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1452?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

I solved the problem by unchecking Mail in the iCloud Preferences.

Bud

It turns out it still fails but not as often.

Bud

It turrns out it still fails but not as often.

Bud

I too updated to Mavericks as soon as it came out ... and I've noticed "mail" is becoming a big problem in mavericks... forcing quit in order to shut down proberly forcing quit in order to run adjacent applications .. forcing quite constatly on the Mail application... the only clitch that i've seemed to have noticed operating on Mavericks ... and also i noticed osx mavericks mail made is really difficult to costomize an imap account or even create an imap account... Application "mail" has been a real thorn in osx Mavericks 😟 . but inside of mavericks core system i have been feeling less of the need or urge to update system... from what i can remember i was getting betta updates in 2006 almost every day but the betta updates have finally stopped and i think Mavericks is a good platform to fall asleep too... if you catch my drift... 😉