Gore Vidal Quotes
34 quotations by Gore Vidal
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith. |
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies. |
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. |
We're not a democracy. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so. |
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. |
That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president. |
That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers. |
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. |
One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves. |
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. |
Never have children, only grandchildren. |
Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made. |
It's not enough to succeed. Others must fail. |
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail. |
In writing and politicking, it's best not to think about it, just do it. |
I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television. |
Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little. |
By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over. |
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. |
Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates. |
Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an I.Q. of 60. |
All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world. |
All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself. |
A narcissist is someone better looking than you are. |
A good deed never goes unpunished. |