FastSaying

I'm exactly as I appear. There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water.


Gore Vidal

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

I'm exactly as I appear. There is no warm lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you ...
GORE VIDAL I'm cold in summer. I'm the coldest person ever! It's very ironic I'm never cold in ...
CARICE VAN HOUTEN Warm your soul with positive thoughts. Otherwise you're gonna catch a cold from the ice inside your ...
LILY CHATTERJEE How many women have the courage to start properly with a cold, cold bath early in the morning? I jum...
ANNA HELD I don't know, maybe I'm immature, but I still find it funny if I dump cold water on my girlf...
DANIEL TOSH That feeling when you're so cold you'd give anything to be warm - I've had it before, li...
BEAR GRYLLS It doesn't matter if the water is cold or warm if you're going to have to wade through it an...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN I love a Hebrew National hot dog with an ice-cold Corona - no lime. If the phone rings, I won't ...
MAYA ANGELOU You're gonna catch a cold from the ice inside your soul
CHRISTINA PERRI Positivity is the sun that drives away winter from the soul. Warm your soul with positive thoughts, ...
LILY CHATTERJEE Last year, I made a refrigerator in my basement. And I needed to because I needed to figure how - yo...
ALTON BROWN Water rushing through my VEINS, cleanings me of deamons DEEP inside my brain. Black rose petals now ...
FEMALE IMAGINATION When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible....
ERNEST HEMINGWAY No matter how cold you are or how hungry you are, you might be warm tomorrow.
BEN SCHNETZER You cold?' He chafes my arms. I haven't been cold since I moved here. This is something else. 'No. B...
SOPHIE JORDAN Fair as the exterior may be, if you go in, you will find bare places, heaps of rubbish that can neve...
MYRTLE REED I'm a curious person, and I always like to test new waters, and I've always jumped into the ...
JOCHEN ZEITZ There isn't a good guideline on that because at this time of year, you're going from open water to m...
MARK PEARCE Success is as ice cold and lonely as the North Pole.
VICKI BAUM If you are cold at night, let the promise of my love cover you like a warm blanket
MATTHEW WHITE Of two hearts one is always warm and one is always cold: the cold heart is more precious than diamon...
GRAHAM GREENE Being cold is not debilitating. We learned that from the Eskimos. They could be cold, and they could...
BUD GRANT If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.
EMILY DICKINSON Ice burns, and it is hard to the warm-skinned to distinguish one
sensation, fire, from the othe...
A.S. BYATT My diet, my regime, the whole life I have on the road has always got that little bit of stress becau...
GEDDY LEE Today, I would pick the person who made me feel warm, rather than the one who left me cold.
LAUREN GRAHAM Blake Hartt, I choose you. I deserve you. I want you.” Livia proved it by kissing his cold lips un...
DEBRA ANASTASIA I'm a go-hard type. It's in my DNA. I physically prepare my body as if I'm a trained ath...
USHER The task is not to find the lovable object, but to find the object before you lovable – whether gi...
SøREN KIERKEGAARD Well, now that I have a baby, I'm that person who's looking for all the parks. I'm also ...
JENNA FISCHER How can you expect a man who's warm to understand one who's cold?
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN If the world seems cold to you, kindle fires to warm it.
LUCY LARCOM Let a kind word warm you when your thoughts turn cold
MARTY RUBIN I felt pretty good today. I was a little warm. Although it was a little cold out there, I was a litt...
IVORY LATTA I don't ever wear makeup. I steam my face. I put hot water to open pores and cold water to close...
PAZ DE LA HUERTA I like the weather. In Holland, snowy, ice, cold rain.
DEBBY CONNOR It doesn't matter if the water is cold or warm if you're going to have to wade through it anyway
TEILHARD DE CHARDIN and you come away with a great little story of a mess of a dreamer with the nerve to adore you
TAYLOR SWIFT I've figured out what to do so far, but it's always the next thing you come to where the man...
JUDI DENCH Better to dress too warm and be warm, then to dress too cold and be cold.
MATT MALDRE Once I showed up at my sister's with a baby rabbit I had bought from some children because its e...
JULIETTE GORDON LOW If you dunk your head in cold water, you can't stay under for more than five seconds. I mean, th...
MALCOLM MCDOWELL I robbed them, and I killed them as cold as ice, and I would do it again, and I know I would kill an...
AILEEN WUORNOS We see a cold, hard, brittle outer layer, but a lot of activity underneath. Does it represent an oce...
JAMES HEAD Once I'm on stage, there's just no time for a sip of water - I've always got my hands in...
NINA CONTI I wear my cool on the inside; that's why my hands are always so cold.
DIA REEVES If you're a goal scorer, you have to have a certain attitude. I'm very serious. My missus th...
MICHAEL OWEN Fame always brings loneliness. Success is as ice cold and lonely as the North Pole.
VICKI BAUM If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry....
EMILY DICKINSON You think 24-7 when you're a creative person. And I find pleasure in everything - if I'm in ...
FRANCISCO COSTA Ice cold failure is the first step toward the heated moments known as success.
JEFFREY LEONARD I usually get myself into situations that cause sparks. I mean I'm a girl that likes the storms....
TORI AMOS I would say what scares me is that I'm going to ultimately find out at the end of my life that I...
DEMI MOORE ... everyone knows that ice cream is worth the trouble of being cold. Like all things virtuou...
BRANDON SANDERSON On a hot day, you can't think of anything better to hop into some cold water in a quarry. What they ...
AMY LOUVIERE Hot water makes stress, makes you embarrassed… cold makes you to refresh, calm, relax… but mainl...
DEYTH BANGER In 'Swimming Pool,' all the colors are very warm, sunny, the pool and all that. In 'Love...
LUDIVINE SAGNIER I like the cold; I don't have problem with cold, and I don't have problem with rain either, ...
BOMAN IRANI By coming down elbow first, I'd made a large enough crack in the ice to sink through.
The water...
RACHEL SHARP You can't break Russian people, you know? 'Cos we're made in cold snow. We're very r...
IRINA SHAYK If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I...
EMILY DICKINSON I think I'm lovable. That's the gift God gave me. I don't do anything to be lovable. I h...
ANN B. DAVIS How can you expect a man who's warm to understand a man who's cold?
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN I'm still a kid inside, and adventure is adventure wherever you find it.
JIM DALE some ice for cold beer.
ERIC CLARK The timing was really unfortunate, because the cold weather moved in. And when you have snow and ice...
ALICIA DIXON I killed those men, robbed them as cold as ice. And I'd do it again, too, ... There's no chance in k...
AILEEN WUORNOS Great things come out of being hungry and cold. Once you're pampered, you get lazy.
ROB ZOMBIE Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thou...
ALFRED LORD TENNYSON Whether I'm wearing lots of makeup or no makeup, I'm always the same person inside.
LADY GAGA My grandfather once told her if you couldn't read with cold feet, there wouldn't be a literate soul ...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON There is an old saying that, you can't kill a frog by dropping him into hot water. As you drop him i...
SOURCE UNKNOWN If you take a reasonable amount of vitamin C regularly, the incidence of the common cold goes down. ...
LINUS PAULING It's been pretty devastating. We had a really cold December and some ice fishing in the canals. ... ...
GARY TOWNS The tea is ice-cold, the room grows colder and colder, but I grow warmer and warmer.
CLARA SCHUMANN Of course, Minneapolis, we think, 'Oh well, it's cold there, lethally cold.' But the rea...
DAN BUETTNER There's no rule I want to break or ever wanted to break - I find the conventional life gratifyin...
EDITH PEARLMAN I wouldn't say it's cold, but every year Winnipeg's athlete of the year is an ice fisherman.
DALE TALLON I just know that I could never spend a winter in Chicago or some place like that. I'm just not a...
EMILY ROBISON You can't say I look like this person or sound like this person exactly because I made it my own...
LIL UZI VERT I'm about as straight an arrow as you'll find out there.
DEBORAH NORVILLE There is a very definite Russian heart in me; that never dies. I think you're born and you live ...
PAULLINA SIMONS I had a dream about you. We were ice fishing in my freezer. I caught a few cold beers, and you wonde...
DORA J. AROD My style of songwriting is influenced by cinema. I'm a frustrated filmmaker. A fan once said to ...
JONI MITCHELL Waitress: "And to drink?"
Artemis: "Spring water. Irish, if you have it. And no ice, please. As...
EOIN COLFER There was a verse that said if you are lukewarm rather than hot or cold, God will spit you out of hi...
MAGGIE ROWE 'Empire of Self' is a loving portrait of a very difficult man. Jay Parini, himself a gifted ...
JEROME CHARYN Others, I am not the first,
Have willed more mischief than they durst:
If in the breathles...
A.E. HOUSMAN When you walk and smile at all of those around you, you will find that your smile is as contagious a...
ANTHONY T. HINCKS I don't believe in conspiracy theories. I'm just a cold-blooded investigator.
KEVIN GATES I'm not possessive, I'm caring... Once you realize a person doesn't want that much care,...
SALMAN KHAN I want a beer. I want a giant, ice-cold bottle of beer and shower sex.
NORA ROBERTS I found out why cats drink out of the toilet. My mother told me it's because the water is cold in th...
WENDY LIEBMAN King was really telling us it's not about love, it's about being lovable. 'I love you baby and if I ...
DICK GREGORY If one comes across sometimes as being cold or brusque, it's simply because I'm striving for...
ANNA WINTOUR During the wintertime in cold cities, you sometimes need a party to break through the melancholy.
JOSH GORDON I would have to break the ice with a warm smile that would melt her heart.
TAI You can’t be friends with someone you have feelings for. It’ll just be a constant reminder of wh...
JAIME REED We were just ice cold in the second half.
BRIAN GREEN My brother asked me once, 'Are you a misanthrope?' And I said, 'No, I just find people i...
CRAIG KILBORN

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 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 I sometimes think it is because they are so bad at expressing themselves verbally that writers take ...
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