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I sometimes think it is because they are so bad at expressing themselves verbally that writers take to pen and paper in the first place.


Gore Vidal

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ALICIA KEYS Writers since at least the heyday of Gore Vidal have bemoaned their audience's defection to othe...
GARTH RISK HALLBERG Gore Vidal has been a friend of mine for years, and he's one of the greatest writers in American...
CYBILL SHEPHERD Sometimes my feelings are so hot that I have to take the pen and put them out on paper to keep them ...
MARK TWAIN Writers sometimes write things for me and I like to see what they write because I want to see what t...
ISAIAH MUSTAFA Even more staggeringly, depression is a disease so bad that people are killing themselves because of...
MATT HAIG I don't think fifth is the perfect place to start at this circuit because overtaking is so difficult...
FERNANDO ALONSO Just because it is eligible, doesn't mean it is required. Right now, we're throwing a bad policy at ...
ANDREW RUDNICK Sometimes it's more difficult to exist as a female lead, especially in action movies because all...
MONICA BELLUCCI We lived in a classless society. We'd spend a summer at Gore Vidal's house in Italy, but we ...
GABY HOFFMANN Sometimes laws are bad because they are undemocratic and sometimes laws are bad because they are arc...
GERRY NICHOLLS All I need to do
is place my pen against paper
and your love
writes for me.
KAMAND KOJOURI That's why actors can take on other lives, because I think basically, at the bottom of everything, t...
ANJELICA HUSTON I think, like any artist, those baby songs are not the best things you've ever written, but they...
RACHEL PLATTEN I had a year off, so my wife and I were heading to Italy to study Italian. We found a little house i...
JAY PARINI I think writers are prone to hyperbole sometimes.
JOHN LEGEND So much better to write pen on paper; you can do it anywhere, say, while stuck at the airport.
UPAMANYU CHATTERJEE I'm here to break boundaries, man. That's all. I'm here to be the first so that the peop...
ASAP ROCKY Let him be kept from paper, pen, and ink; So may he cease to write, and learn to think.
MATTHEW PRIOR Writers are such phonies: they sometimes have wise insights but they don't live by them at all. That...
ANNE SEXTON Writers just play out their fantasies in their books. They are often very unstable, tricky people, B...
ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH First off, I?m a builder. And I see the foundation put in place by (recently fired Kings G.M.) Dave ...
DEAN LOMBARDI I read somewhere that writers, as they get older, become more and more perfectionist. Which may be b...
TOM WOLFE It reminds me why I chose Dauntless in the first place: not because they are perfect, but because th...
VERONICA ROTH Gore is keeping the existing system in place because it works -- using the budget surplus to add to ...
DEAN BAKER If you have ever had a serious desire to put pen to paper, this group and its parent organization, R...
SANDY MOFFETT Life will be wonderful when men no longer fear dying. When the last superstitions are thrown out and...
GORE VIDAL I would hate to think that some people have found themselves in a musical cul-de-sac and have ceased...
HENRY ROLLINS I think the important thing to know is that women are intelligent and they know how to take care of ...
BETTY DEFAZIO I'm not the best at expressing my feelings other than in songs or on paper.
CASSADEE POPE Queerness isn't just Lady Gaga and overpriced drinks and fauxhawks. It's James Baldwin and B...
JOHN CAMERON MITCHELL We are seeing in the numbers he is ahead, but the depth of his support is not as great as it could b...
DICK BENNETT I always think the insecurity is going to go away, but it's always there. Only bad writers think...
HARLAN COBEN did not have to take the election away form Al Gore: He and his campaign gave it away themselves.
AL GORE I think it probably seemed like I was anxious because I was swinging at bad pitches. I was thinking ...
VLADIMIR GUERRERO I don't write directly on to the computer because I don't think well facing forward with fin...
JOSHUA FERRIS We were talking the other evening about the phrases one uses when trying to comfort someone who is i...
ELIZABETH GILBERT Novels by British writers are among my favorites because our family has enjoyed travel in England an...
BEVERLY CLEARY I hope they don't withdraw the revised offer. If they do, that would mean that they were not sincere...
DIRK HERMANN 'Empire of Self' is a loving portrait of a very difficult man. Jay Parini, himself a gifted ...
JEROME CHARYN I think sensitive is the wrong description of me. I'm British, actually, so quite bad at express...
JAMES BLUNT You know, it's a funny thing about writers. Most people don't stop to think of books being written b...
CORNELIA FUNKE Expressing emotion is not so easy. He has to remind himself that English is not her first language. ...
ELISE VALMORBIDA I hate the bad rap that people give my parents. Because they are just parents, really, at the end of...
LINDSAY LOHAN I don't think that women ought to sit down at table with men. It ruins conversation and I'm sure it'...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM I know a lot of writers who would much rather be writing the Great American Novel, but they've g...
ERIC STOLTZ Sometimes, the place is really beautiful, and, sometimes, it's just the person you are with that mak...
OUSSAMA HEDHLI Some writers think that fiction is the space of great neutrality where all humans share the same con...
RACHEL KUSHNER Male writers are thought of as "writers" first and then "men". As for female writers, they are first...
ELIF SHAFAK There are so many things that the bus driver has no control of. We just happen to be at the wrong pl...
SONNY WITT Sometimes failing is what's needed. I think it can put people in a good mood, to see someone fail. L...
RIVKA GALCHEN The logic is that when you provide schools or any social service to people, they have no choice. The...
ESTHER DUFLO I came to know Gore Vidal in the mid-1980s, when I was living in southern Italy, virtually a neighbo...
JAY PARINI I think every director has a different take, some are good, some are bad. The directors you get on b...
TIM ROTH I think of America not so much as a single country but as a constellation of groups out there compet...
HAMPTON SIDES When I first came back to go to church, my family told me not to discuss politics or my views there....
AMY MOORE What is it that makes you so angry, bothers you so deeply, that you're compelled to act?
CRAIG GROESCHEL There are writers whose first drafts are so lean, so skimpy, that they must go back and add words, s...
NANCY KRESS Maybe this is kind of cliche, but animals, well, dogs, are what I do for a living. One reason I like...
MERRILL MARKOE Sometimes they will return because they have been successful at that place. They feel less risk.
PENNY BARTLEY It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously.
OSCAR WILDE We do not like the truth because it is simple, we do not want the truth because it is hard, and we d...
PAT WALSH I don't think it's so much that we won, I think it's how we won and the players we had and the way t...
MARK MESSIER It is only because of their stupidity that they are able to be so sure of themselves.
FRANZ KAFKA If they think we're wrong, and they feel that strongly, then take us to court. I don't think we'll b...
MICHAEL COCHRAN I'm not so worried anymore, because now I know nobody knows what they are doing in life, and nobody ...
NORA MCINERNY PURMORT When things are bad, we take comfort in the thought that they could always get worse. And when they ...
MALCOLM STEVENSON FORBES When things are bad, we take comfort in the thought that they could always be worse. And when they a...
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE When things are bad, we take comfort in the thought that they could always get worse. And when they ...
MALCOLM S. FORBES When things are bad, we take comfort in the thought that they could always be worse. And when they a...
THICH NHAT HANH Sometimes I get frustrated because I don't like to lose and probably didn't approach things the corr...
HAPPY HARVICK I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won’t tell them that people are starving i...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I got up and told everyone thanks for their support. I was a little nervous at first. But I speak at...
LISA ADLER The 50/50 rule means that when people meet you for the first time, before you ever speak, there is a...
CARLA HARRIS I think that our public schools sometimes get a bad rap - and sometimes deservedly so. I think the g...
DAN BONNER Here is one fact 1 minute to finish the class, 1 day to die, one day behind that fact, one day in th...
DEYTH BANGER There's an addictive quality to fame and when your celebrity starts to wane, people get a real fear ...
KEVIN BACON Sometimes I think my head is so big because it is so full of dreams. Because it is.
BERNARD POMERANCE Some problems are better left to pass the Night, because by so doing they solve themselves before fi...
STEPHEN .R. ANYAEGBU I admire when people take the harder path, not because they are masochistic and want to beat themsel...
JOSH HARTNETT I believe, without expressing a preference, that it would be very difficult to overlook the elements...
DOUG BINGHAM I think that writers are, at best, outsiders to the society they inhabit. They have a kind of detach...
JOHN IRVING I think sometimes it makes you sicker than what you really are to take so much medication.
DOROTHY MOORE I used to be a calligrapher for weddings and events - that was my side job while I was auditioning. ...
MEGHAN MARKLE The NBA's chosen ones think I'm setting a bad example? I think they need to look around and ...
DENNIS RODMAN The fact that they tried to make the change in the first place to us was an indication that they did...
MARTIN COTHRAN Most comic scriptwriters are very bad. The artists are good, but the writers are so bad.
HARRY HARRISON At first, I didn't think it was going to be that bad. Whenever it happened and they showed the foota...
CASSY STEBER People become writers in the first place by those things that hurt you into art, as Yeats said it. T...
PETE HAMILL It is not that the French are not profound, but they all express themselves so well that we are led ...
VAN WYCK BROOKS Look at them. There are your true philosophers. I think that Mack and the boys know everything that ...
JOHN STEINBECK My first thought when I came here was that I understood why there are so many great Irish writers - ...
CHRISTOPHER MELONI I love actors, and I love the casting process. It's funny, like, some writers don't like act...
BRYAN FULLER I don't believe in trouble. Because I think that trouble is sometimes good, sometimes bad. I've been...
BETH ORTON They keep you really busy. It was sometimes hard to process everything because there was so much to ...
KRISTI JOHNSON I only need 5 things in life: Pen, Paper, Internet, Food and Sleep.
IFEOLUWA EGBETADE With pen and paper, I have written clever things. I have seen what it is to be a chief, a king, and ...
SRI GURU GRANTH SAHIB Sometimes I think the greatest things God teaches us are only found when we realize that we were nev...
ERYNN MANGUM With the first 'Hatchet,' I had an epic battle with the ratings board. They kept giving the ...
ADAM GREEN Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, ar...
JOSEPH CAMPBELL

More Gore Vidal

Having no contemporaries left means you cannot say, 'Well, so-and-so will like this,' which ...
GORE VIDAL McCain is significant in the sense that he has no significance at all on any subject.
GORE VIDAL I can understand companionship.
GORE VIDAL Of all recent presidents, Clinton was expected to behave the most sensibly in economic matters. He u...
GORE VIDAL The first grown-up book that I read on my own was a nineteenth-century edition of 'Tales from Li...
GORE VIDAL I'm not paranoid, no. I'm different in that I have enemies. Very real ones.
GORE VIDAL What is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose p...
GORE VIDAL The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country - and we haven't seen them ...
GORE VIDAL As for civil liberties, any one who is not vigilant may one day find himself living, if not in a pol...
GORE VIDAL The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No Fi...
GORE VIDAL At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation and prejudice.
GORE VIDAL Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some eviden...
GORE VIDAL Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.
GORE VIDAL I could be a lot happier. I could be the senator from Aerospace taking bribes, and be quite happy.
GORE VIDAL I find in most novels no imagination at all. They seem to think the highest form of the novel is to ...
GORE VIDAL Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
GORE VIDAL Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness witho...
GORE VIDAL Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps twenty players, an...
GORE VIDAL That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness...
GORE VIDAL Never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.
GORE VIDAL For half a century photography has been the "art form" of the untalented. Obviously some pictures ar...
GORE VIDAL Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is...
GORE VIDAL Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence...
GORE VIDAL Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
GORE VIDAL It is difficult to find a reputable American historian who will acknowledge the crude fact that a Fr...
GORE VIDAL I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.
GORE VIDAL There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo -- or heterosex...
GORE VIDAL Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex cer...
GORE VIDAL The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.
GORE VIDAL Never have children, only grand children.
GORE VIDAL Great critics do not explicate a text; they describe it and then report on what they have described,...
GORE VIDAL I'm exactly as I appear. There is no warm lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you ...
GORE VIDAL When Ronald Reagan's career in show business came to an end, he was hired to impersonate, first, a C...
GORE VIDAL How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time...
GORE VIDAL There is hardly an American male of my generation who has not at one time or another tried to master...
GORE VIDAL Of course, it is possible for any citizen with time to spare, and a canny eye, to work out what is a...
GORE VIDAL The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western World. No Fi...
GORE VIDAL For half a century, photography has been the art form of the untalented. Obviously some pictures are...
GORE VIDAL As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to ill...
GORE VIDAL There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.
GORE VIDAL If most men and women were forced to rely upon physical charm to attract lovers, their sexual lives ...
GORE VIDAL Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But the...
GORE VIDAL Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues an...
GORE VIDAL Laughing at someone else is an excellent way of learning how to laugh at oneself; and questioning wh...
GORE VIDAL It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imag...
GORE VIDAL Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
GORE VIDAL In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, ...
GORE VIDAL To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours,...
GORE VIDAL I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
GORE VIDAL If most men and women were forced to rely upon physical charm to attract lovers, their sexual live...
GORE VIDAL Half the American population no longer reads newspapers: plainly, they are the clever half.
GORE VIDAL Style is knowing who you are, what to say, and not giving a damn.
GORE VIDAL All the other candidates are making speeches about how much they have done for their country, which ...
GORE VIDAL Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence t...
GORE VIDAL It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we...
GORE VIDAL It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
GORE VIDAL I'm a born-again atheist.
GORE VIDAL Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes i...
GORE VIDAL There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.
GORE VIDAL Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
GORE VIDAL It is true, as Sartre once wrote, referring to French Army atrocities in Algeria, that the real trag...
GORE VIDAL We are the United States of Amnesia, which is encouraged by a media that has no desire to tell us th...
GORE VIDAL For every Scott Fitzgerald concerned with the precise word and the selection of relevant incident, t...
GORE VIDAL On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a deb...
GORE VIDAL Washington turned a blind eye to Al-Qaeda.
GORE VIDAL Because there is no cosmic point to the life that each of us perceives on this distant bit of dust a...
GORE VIDAL I am a novelist turned temporary adventurer, and I chose to write television, movies and plays for m...
GORE VIDAL I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
GORE VIDAL Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.
GORE VIDAL The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning th...
GORE VIDAL Write something, even if it's just a suicide note.
GORE VIDAL As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to ill...
GORE VIDAL There is only one party in the United States: the Property party... and it has two right wings: Repu...
GORE VIDAL To invent a war means that you've become a wartime president, and you can suspend much if not al...
GORE VIDAL By 1939, the Depression was back. Unemployment was huge. Roosevelt didn't have any quick fix. Re...
GORE VIDAL It's always best to stay out of other people's divorces. And their civil wars.
GORE VIDAL Until the rise of American advertising, it never occurred to anyone anywhere in the world that the t...
GORE VIDAL I am told the Cheney-Bush team dislikes their junta being compared to the Nazis. If they ceased beha...
GORE VIDAL Walter Lippmann suggests that the United States behaves like a society which thinks it is complete w...
GORE VIDAL Fortunately, our audiences are used to a kind of boredom in the theatre, and if the writer is skillf...
GORE VIDAL Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But the...
GORE VIDAL Jack Kennedy very much enjoyed Fletcher Knebel's thriller 'Seven Days in May,' later a f...
GORE VIDAL Each youth betrays considerable anxiety about the wedding night ahead.
GORE VIDAL In August 1961, I visited President Kennedy at Hyannis Port. The Berlin Wall was going up, and he wa...
GORE VIDAL I think I have a normal threshold of anger, but it's true that I am, by nature, belligerent.
GORE VIDAL The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.
GORE VIDAL It makes no difference who you vote for - the two parties are really one party representing four per...
GORE VIDAL Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an I.Q. of 60.
GORE VIDAL No sooner does an American president take his oath of office than the speculation begins: Will he be...
GORE VIDAL That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president.
GORE VIDAL Envy is the central fact of American life.
GORE VIDAL I didn't mean to spend my life writing American history, which should have been taught in the sc...
GORE VIDAL I'm not a conspiracy theorist - I'm a conspiracy analyst.
GORE VIDAL By the end of World War II, we were the most powerful and least damaged of the great nations. We als...
GORE VIDAL Temperamentally, I am suspicious of belonging to anything. When I ran for office, I debated seriousl...
GORE VIDAL The greatest pleasure when I started making money was not buying cars or yachts but finding myself a...
GORE VIDAL For certain people after 50, litigation takes the place of sex.
GORE VIDAL It is not enough to succeed; others must fail.
GORE VIDAL Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.
GORE VIDAL For certain people after fifty, litigation takes the place of sex.
GORE VIDAL Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel.
GORE VIDAL I don't want prizes. I turned down the National Institute of Arts and Letters when I was elected to ...
GORE VIDAL Young people are more hopeful at a certain age than adults, but I suspect that's glandular. As for c...
GORE VIDAL I might be President by now if it weren't for this 'queer' thing
GORE VIDAL Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say and not giving a damn.
GORE VIDAL Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualifi...
GORE VIDAL A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is an ability to articulate human relationships.
GORE VIDAL The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who...
GORE VIDAL A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
GORE VIDAL All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world.
GORE VIDAL The last best hope of earth, two trillion dollars in debt, is spinning out of control, and all we ca...
GORE VIDAL Never have children, only grandchildren.
GORE VIDAL It makes no difference whom you vote for -- the two parties are really one party representing four p...
GORE VIDAL Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is ...
GORE VIDAL I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon. I cannot understand th...
GORE VIDAL Whenever a friend succeeds a little something in me dies.
GORE VIDAL Americans, in general, are ignorant, bigoted, and deeply unhappy with their declining incomes.
GORE VIDAL Television is now so desparately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel.
GORE VIDAL Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers...
GORE VIDAL There's a lot to be said for being nouveau riche, and the Reagans mean to say it all.
GORE VIDAL I'm exactly as I appear. There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once...
GORE VIDAL I can't name three first-rate literary critics in the United States. I'm told there are a fe...
GORE VIDAL I was raised in the Washington household of my grandfather Senator Thomas P. Gore of Oklahoma, and h...
GORE VIDAL Now you have people in Washington who have no interest in the country at all. They're interested...
GORE VIDAL I'm a fervent foe of water pollution, whether it is our own Hudson River or Philadelphia's t...
GORE VIDAL He (Donald) is thorough and very careful not to take sides when there's insufficient evidence,
GORE VIDAL Religions sprang up among men to deal with the sometimes terrifying aspects of existence, to make se...
GORE VIDAL Rome... at its most decadent, had never thought of hiring an actor to go through the motions of bein...
GORE VIDAL Now you have people in Washington who have no interest in the country at all. They're interested in ...
GORE VIDAL Most writers write books that they wouldn't read. I ought to know; I've done it myself.
GORE VIDAL The last best hope of earth, two trillion dollars in debt, is spinning out of control, and all we ca...
GORE VIDAL All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.
GORE VIDAL Didn't George Washington say, 'He who controls Afghanistan will carry New Jersey?'
GORE VIDAL On September 5, 1774, forty-five of the weightiest colonial men formed the First Continental Congres...
GORE VIDAL Overcrowding in the cities is producing a collective madness in which irrational violence flourishes...
GORE VIDAL After the French Revolution, the world money power shifted from Paris to London. For three generatio...
GORE VIDAL Jews, blacks and homosexuals are despised by the Christian and Communist majorities of East and West...
GORE VIDAL The American press exists for one purpose only, and that is to convince Americans that they are livi...
GORE VIDAL To preserve the human race, it is now necessary to reorganize society. To this end, an Authority mus...
GORE VIDAL I don't even read most reviews, unless there is a potential lawsuit on view.
GORE VIDAL The only thing that I react really violently to is being misquoted.
GORE VIDAL 'The Turner Diaries' is a racist daydream by a former physics teacher writing under the pseu...
GORE VIDAL Both Marx and Christ agree that in this life, a right action is consideration for the welfare of oth...
GORE VIDAL I like the way you always manage to state the obvious with a sense of real discovery.
GORE VIDAL The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning th...
GORE VIDAL What the Kinseyites and I had in common so long ago was the knowledge that homosexual and heterosexu...
GORE VIDAL There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo- or heterosexua...
GORE VIDAL In the German concentration camps, Jews wore yellow stars while homosexuals wore pink lambdas.
GORE VIDAL In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writ...
GORE VIDAL It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imag...
GORE VIDAL Trust a nitwit society like this one to think that there are only two categories - fag and straight.
GORE VIDAL Primarily, I am a prose writer with axes to grind, and the theatre is a good place to do the grindin...
GORE VIDAL Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fi...
GORE VIDAL Litigation takes the place of sex at middle age.
GORE VIDAL What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke?
GORE VIDAL If most men and women were forced to rely upon physical charm to attract lovers, their sexual lives ...
GORE VIDAL These people [Bush Administration] are for the most part rip-off artists. Notice that they're all ga...
GORE VIDAL The idea of a good society is something you do not need a religion and eternal punishment to buttres...
GORE VIDAL Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an I.Q. of 60.
GORE VIDAL I don't see us winning the war. We have made enemies of one billion Muslims."
GORE VIDAL roughly 80 percent of police work in the United States has to do with the regulation of our private ...
GORE VIDAL I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults
GORE VIDAL It is essential to naturalist doctrine that literature, to be good, must, finally, be the author'...
GORE VIDAL I have always regarded as a stroke of good fortune that I was not born or brought up in a small Amer...
GORE VIDAL Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He ...
GORE VIDAL Although Americans justify their self-interest in moral terms, their true interest is never itself m...
GORE VIDAL There is something about the state putting the power to bully into the hands of subnormal, sadistic ...
GORE VIDAL I’m not sentimental about anything. Life flows by, and you flow with it or you don’t. Move on an...
GORE VIDAL I don't want anything. I don't want a job. I don't want to be respectable. I don't want prizes. I tu...
GORE VIDAL Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose....
GORE VIDAL A current pejorative adjective is narcissistic. Generally, a narcissist is anyone better looking tha...
GORE VIDAL I'm a born-again atheist
GORE VIDAL We are the United States of Amnesia.
GORE VIDAL Write something, even if it's just a suicide note.
GORE VIDAL It makes no difference who you vote for - the two parties are really one party representing four per...
GORE VIDAL I am an obsessive rewriter, doing one draft and then another and another, usually five. In a way, I ...
GORE VIDAL That is New York. I pointed to the waterfront just ahead as if the city were mine.
GORE VIDAL For certain people, after fifty, litigation takes the place of sex
GORE VIDAL A court is the most depressing place on earth. Wherever there is a throne, one may observe in rich d...
GORE VIDAL The truth about Pearl Harbour is obscured to this day. But it has been much studied.
GORE VIDAL Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience al...
GORE VIDAL To get people to do needed things is the perennial hard task of government, not to mention of religi...
GORE VIDAL Since we have literally targeted our enemies, the Pentagon assumes that, sooner or later, rogues wil...
GORE VIDAL World War II made prosperous the United States, which had been undergoing a depression for a dozen y...
GORE VIDAL To a born-again atheist like myself, it is clear that each of us has multiple selves, talents, perce...
GORE VIDAL Remember, I'm West Point, where I was born. My father went there.
GORE VIDAL Europe began as the relatively empty, uncivilized Wild West of Asia; then the Western Hemisphere bec...
GORE VIDAL Everything's wrong on Wikipedia.
GORE VIDAL You hear all this whining going on, 'Where are our great writers?' The thing I might feel do...
GORE VIDAL Life will be wonderful when men no longer fear dying. When the last superstitions are thrown out and...
GORE VIDAL Even a child could see the division between what the Galileans [i.e., Christians] say they believe a...
GORE VIDAL Ayn Rand is a rhetorician who writes novels I have never been able to read.
GORE VIDAL Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel...
GORE VIDAL The Pentagon talks about our power to 'overkill' Russia ten times, twenty times, perhaps for...
GORE VIDAL The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.
GORE VIDAL In classical times, it was a capital offense to speculate upon the hour of a king's death or upo...
GORE VIDAL My memory plays me odd tricks these days [...] Age spares us nothing, old friend. Like ancient trees...
GORE VIDAL ...is not all philosophy but preparation for a serene dying?
GORE VIDAL The failure of Hellenism has been, largely, a matter of organization. Rome never tried to impose any...
GORE VIDAL But like so many others nowadays, poor Julian wanted to believe that man's life is profoundly more s...
GORE VIDAL