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In classical times, it was a capital offense to speculate upon the hour of a king's death or upon the identity of his successor.


Gore Vidal

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Love is a growing, or full constant light,
And his first minute, after noon, is night.
JOHN DONNE She was infamous once upon a time. She's legendary now. The girl is a definite force to be reckoned ...
REBECCA HARRIS In the land of Ingary where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exis...
DIANA WYNNE JONES In France, the people were the sport of a king's caprice. Everywhere was the shadow of the Basti...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Gore Vidal has been a friend of mine for years, and he's one of the greatest writers in American...
CYBILL SHEPHERD 'Empire of Self' is a loving portrait of a very difficult man. Jay Parini, himself a gifted ...
JEROME CHARYN Stairs to climb are difficult it takes time and effort and going down is easies job... what do I mea...
DEYTH BANGER Writers since at least the heyday of Gore Vidal have bemoaned their audience's defection to othe...
GARTH RISK HALLBERG You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.
HENRY JAMES I came to know Gore Vidal in the mid-1980s, when I was living in southern Italy, virtually a neighbo...
JAY PARINI It was not a bosom to repose upon, but it was a capital bosom to hang jewels upon.
CHARLES DICKENS Anyways, that very same night there was a fight in the casino on B Deck. Some of the passengers got ...
CHRISTINA ENGELA The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon Turns Ashes - or it prospers; and anon, Like Snow upon th...
OMAR KHAYYAM Listen, last time I talked to you three, you were all two oars short of having any oars, so I don't ...
JAMES RILEY We die a day at a time
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA I am often asked how it is that I am able to value people to such a deep degree. Apparently, I exhib...
C. JOYBELL C. She wasn't bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY So, I guess we are who we are for alot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I love my mom so much. I don't care if that's corny to say. I think on my next birthday, I'm going t...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY We Are All Infinite
STEPHEN CHBOSKY (All the grief she had suffered over her lifetime had moulded her face into a mask of eternal sadnes...
JEAN SASSON You can't just sit there and put everyone's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I saw other people there. Old men sitting alone. Young girls with blue eye shadow and awkward jaws. ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY That one moment when you know you are not a sad story. You are ALIVE.
STEPHAN CHBOSKY Somos quienes somos por un montón de razones.Quizás nunca conozcamos la mayoría de ellas.Pero aun...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY Ambos dijeron que tomara asiento y parecían hablar en serio, así que me senté.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I know these will all be stories some day, and our pictures will become old photographs. We all beco...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybewe'll never know most of them.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY There's nothing like the deep breathes after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore st...
STHEPHEN CHBOSKY no more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks, when the teacher rings the bell, drop...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I don't know the significance of this, but I find it very interesting.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY Maybe it’s sad that these are now memories. And maybe it’s not sad.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY We lived in a classless society. We'd spend a summer at Gore Vidal's house in Italy, but we ...
GABY HOFFMANN Each man lives in his own universe and when he dies the world is over
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA Though we are terrorized by death, it's not different from birth, it just happens
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA She put others before herself and yet you hate her. What did she do to you?
EDWARD KITSIS AND ADAM HOROWITZ Life will be wonderful when men no longer fear dying. When the last superstitions are thrown out and...
GORE VIDAL Although it's great to appear to a feast, home is always sweet, though it may be lonely and cold lik...
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA We all want to become more than we are, we want to live forever, that is why we hate death and creat...
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA If Stephen King was a killer, he will be the best killer ever existed, check out his novels, check o...
DEYTH BANGER I was very grateful to have heard it again. Because I guess we all forget sometimes. And I think eve...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY the deceased don’t want you to forget about them. They just want you to move past it; not to dwell...
JUSTIN PYFROM I live nearby a graveyard, that's where I get all my inspiration for wisdom and life
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA Death is tough for the people left behind on earth.
PRATEEKSHA MALIK The mightiest power of death is not that it can make people die, but that it can make the people you...
FREDRIK BACKMAN Closed eyes, heart not beating, but a living love.
AVIS COREA But secondly you say 'society must exact vengeance, and society must punish'. Wrong on both counts. ...
VICTOR HUGO What a man has made himself, he will be; his state is the result of his past life, and his heaven or...
CATHERINE CROWE It was the king's army, the king's people, the king's taxes; and he who questioned the p...
JOHN BUCHANAN ROBINSON Once upon a time there was a girl who was special. This is not her story. Unless you count the part ...
R.J. ANDERSON Our righteousness is in Him, and our hope depends, not upon the exercise of grace in us, but upon th...
JOHN NEWTON Queerness isn't just Lady Gaga and overpriced drinks and fauxhawks. It's James Baldwin and B...
JOHN CAMERON MITCHELL Dreams, just dreams, it's all illusion
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA The world slides, the world goes, and death makes equal the rich and the poor
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA Like a deep sad note
played beneath the ocean
waving through the orb
the memories of ...
PAWAN MISHRA Upon the death of her mother-in-law, Elearnor Roosevelt said, "It is truly a tragedy of life to have...
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT The 'kingdom of Heaven' is a condition of the heart - not something that comes 'upon the...
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE There was a slight noise from the direction of the dim corner where the ladder was. It was the king ...
MARK TWAIN It's a harrowing experience to see death approaching in haste towards you, what is hell but confront...
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA entering upon the high tide of its identity.
DAVID KENNEDY There was still an hour or two of daylight - even though clouds admitted only a greyish light upon t...
WALTER DE LA MARE If the King disregarded it, constitutional monarchy would cease to exist. The King is bound to accep...
CHARLES I You deserve to be with somebody, who knows you're the one, from that very first moment he lays eyes ...
C. JOYBELL C. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foo...
CHARLES DICKENS Marlena's body was found on November 19, and so I consider that the anniversary of her death, though...
JULIE BUNTIN They should make earplugs for people who are grieving, so we don't have to hear the stupid things pe...
CAROLE GEITHNER Never give up on you. In order to make a difference you would have to somehow be different.
JOHNNIE DENT JR. America is sick and tired of spending hour upon hour sitting in their automobile trying to get to wo...
GREG ABBOTT I was suddenly very aware of the fact it was me standing up in that tunnel with the wind over my fac...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY The only perspective is to really be there.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I didn't feel like reading that night, so I went downstairs and watched a half-hour long commercial ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY Why is England manufacturing bigger and better airplanes and bombs and at the same time churning out...
ANNE FRANK The ire of a despotic king Rides forth upon destruction's wing.
UNKNOWN He Is Not Dead

I cannot say, and I will not say
That he is dead. He is just away. JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY When he died, all things soft and beautiful and bright would be buried with him.
MADELINE MILLER I’d give in to the grief but make sure I wasn’t loud enough to draw attention from those who thi...
ADAM SILVERA It hurts when they're gone. And it doesn't matter if it's slow or fast, whether it's a long drawn-ou...
WALTER MOSLEY But surely Uncle Akbar could not be dead as they were dead? There must be something indestructible �...
M.M. KAYE He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole ...
HERMAN MELVILLE If a person takes comfort in his or her faith upon divinity in times of distress, then who the hell ...
ABHIJIT NASKAR you have to be the prude or the slut, and if you pick one, other people hate you for it, and you can...
NED VIZZINI It is better the law should be certain, than that every Judge should speculate upon improvements in ...
JOHN SCOTT So what's the point, then, if we can't be happy? Why are we doing any of this?"

"Oh, ther...
JAMES RILEY Once upon a time my heart was rich in love. Today it is starving for the same warmth and excitement ...
FRANCESCO NICHOLAS CECE Claims of right and insistence upon obligations may depend upon treaty stipulations, or upon the rul...
ELIHU ROOT People in the real world always say, when something terrible happens, that the sadness and loss and ...
FREDRIK BACKMAN When his wife was at his side, she was also in front of him, marking out the horizon of his life. No...
MILAN KUNDERA You're full of contradictions, Ms. Wallace."
I looked up at him and arched a brow. "I'm a girl...
TAMMARA WEBBER The course of management would depend upon his progress and response which is being assessed by the ...
ANUPAM VERMA The course of management would depend upon his progress and response which is being assessed by the ...
DR ANUPAM VERMA The only way he could have her was to shatter this stubborn faith of hers. In doing so, would he sha...
FRANCINE RIVERS I was working at the 'New York Times,' ruing every second of my life, thinking how was I eve...
MICHAEL WOLF An Indian's dress of deer skins, which is wet a hundred times upon his back, dries soft; and his...
GEORGE CATLIN He said that academia reminded him of a badly run circus. The faculty members were like underfed ani...
SUSAN HUBBARD And a stone was brought, and laid upon the mouth of the den; and the king sealed it with his own sig...
BIBLE Easter is reflecting upon suffering for one thing, but it also reflects upon Jesus and his non compl...
MICHAEL LEUNIG And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand...
BIBLE In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon Daniel had a dream and visions of his head upon his ...
BIBLE

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 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 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