"Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half."
— Gore Vidal

"style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn"
— Gore Vidal

"Write something, even if it's just a suicide note. "
— Gore Vidal

"The unfed mind devours itself."
— Gore Vidal

"I'm a born-again atheist."
— Gore Vidal

"There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise."
— Gore Vidal

"[Professor] Frank recalled my idle remark some years ago: 'Never pass up the opportunity to have sex or appear on television.' Advice I would never give today in the age of AIDS and its television equivalent Fox News."
— Gore Vidal (Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir)

"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

"Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little."
— Gore Vidal

"If one starts with the anatomical difference, which even a patriarchal Viennese novelist was able to see was destiny, then one begins to understand why men and women don't get on very well within marriage, or indeed in any exclusive sort of long-range sexual relationship. He is designed to make as many babies as possible with as many different women as he can get his hands on, while she is designed to take time off from her busy schedule as astronaut or role model to lay an egg and bring up the result. Male and female are on different sexual tracks, and that cannot be changed by the Book or any book. Since all our natural instincts are carefully perverted from birth, it is no wonder that we tend to be, if not all of us serial killers, killers of our own true nature. "
— Gore Vidal

"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

"As I looked back over my life, I realized that I enjoyed nothing--not art, not sex--more than going to the movies. "
— Gore Vidal

"I’m not sentimental about anything. Life flows by, and you flow with it or you don’t. Move on and move out."
— Gore Vidal

"No good deed goes unpunished"
— Gore Vidal

""Little Bush says we are at war, but we are not at war because to be
at war Congress has to vote for it. He says we are at war on terror,
but that is a metaphor, though I doubt if he knows what that means.
It's like having a war on dandruff, it's endless and pointless.""
— Gore Vidal

"It is not enough merely to win; others must lose."
— Gore Vidal

"Never have children, only grandchildren. "
— Gore Vidal

"How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself."
— Gore Vidal (Julian: A Novel)

"The worst thing to happen to Lincoln - aside from the unfortunate incident at Ford's theatre - was to fall into the hands of Carl Sandburg."
— Gore Vidal

"Southerners make good novelists: they have so many stories because they have so much family."
— Gore Vidal

"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

"Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head."
— Gore Vidal

"Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say and not giving a damn."
— Gore Vidal

"You can't really succeed with a novel anyway; they're too big. It's like city planning. You can't plan a perfect city because there's too much going on that you can't take into account. You can, however, write a perfect sentence now and then. I have."
— Gore Vidal

"The idea of a good society is something you do not need a religion and eternal punishment to buttress; you need a religion if you are terrified of death."
— Gore Vidal

"The planet Venus, a circle of silver in a green sky, pierced the edge of the evening while the wintry woods darkened about me and in the stillness the regular sound of my footsteps striking the pavement was like a the rhythmic beating of a giant stone heart."
— Gore Vidal (Clouds and Eclipses: The Collected Short Stories)

"Traitors who prevail are patriots; usurpers who succeed are divine emperors."
— Gore Vidal (Julian: A Novel)

"I believe there's something very salutary in, say, beating up a gay-bashing policeman. Preferably one fights through the courts, through the laws, through education, but if at a neighborhood level violence is necessary, I'm all for violence. It's the only thing Americans understand."
— Gore Vidal

"The malady of civilized man is his knowledge of death. The good artist, like the wise man, addresses himself to life and invests with his private vision the deeds and thoughts of men. The creation of a work of art, like an act of love, is our one small yes at the center of a vast no."
— Gore Vidal

"a writer must always tell the truth (unless he's a journalist)"
— Gore Vidal (The American Presidency)

"Always a Godfather, never a God"
— Gore Vidal

"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

"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

"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 (1925 - )
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— Gore Vidal

"a writer must always tell the truth (unless he's a reporter)"
— Gore Vidal (The American Presidency)