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Home
Authors
Gore Vidal
American
Novelist
About the author
The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity - much less dissent.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#World
#Country
#First
#states
#United
#Opinion
#Media
#Corporate
#Wonders
#Dissent
The greatest pleasure when I started making money was not buying cars or yachts but finding myself able to have as many freshly typed drafts as possible.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Money
#Pleasure
#Buying
The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Work
#Nothing
#Needs
#Worth
#Theater
The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#People
#Nothing
#Questioning
#Majority
#Class
#Taxes
#Genius
The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Words
The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#American
#Money
The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#President
Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Want
#Style
#Giving
That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#President
#American
Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Now
#Television
There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#People
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Friend
That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#World
#May
#Writers
#Books
#Busyness
There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo- or heterosexual acts. Most people are a mixture of impulses if not practices.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#People
#Impulses
There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
There's a lot to be said for being nouveau riche, and the Reagans mean to say it all.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Being
Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Years
#Being
#Earth
#Living
#Numbers
To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours, imitating kindly trees, as they watch for birds.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Man
#Trees
#Birds
Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Public
#Today
#Books
Until the rise of American advertising, it never occurred to anyone anywhere in the world that the teenager was a captive in a hostile world of adults.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#World
#American
#Advertising
We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Life
#Love
#World
#Artists
#Kings
#Boys
#Emotion
We're not a democracy.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Democracy
What other culture could have produced someone like Hemmingway and not seen the joke?
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Culture
Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Time
#World
#Writers
#Virtue
#Literature
Write something, even if it's just a suicide note.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Suicide
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Writing
#Faith
#Business
#Fiction
#Countries
Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Writers
#Audiences
What is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose putting down of opinions as though they were facts, and the treating of facts as though they were opinions.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Question
#Opinions
#Facts
As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Will
#President
#Television
#Age
Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Life
#Nothing
#Meaning
#Sex
Now you have people in Washington who have no interest in the country at all. They're interested in their companies, their corporations grabbing Caspian oil.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Now
#People
#Country
#Washington
#Interest
#Oil
#Corporations
A good deed never goes unpunished.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Deed
A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Children
#Parents
All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#World
Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an I.Q. of 60.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Genius
Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#President
#American
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Time
#Words
#People
#Will
#Language
#Vote
#Disguise
By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Time
#Man
Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they're both just aspirin.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Feeling
#Democracy
#Choice
Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Time
#Friend
Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Hope
#People
#Vote
#Newspapers
Never have children, only grandchildren.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Children
Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Democracy
#Bribery
One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Road
Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Democracy
#Elections
On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#American
#states
#United
#Nation
#Commerce
Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#People
#President
#American
Litigation takes the place of sex at middle age.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Age
#Middle age
#Sex
It's not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Succeed
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Succeed
I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Chance
#Television
#Sex
In writing and politicking, it's best not to think about it, just do it.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Writing
In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Writer
#America
#Race
It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist
#Spirit
#Age
#Exercise
#Fact
I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
Gore Vidal,
American
Novelist