A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
GORE VIDALWhat I like least about myself is my belligerence.
More Gore Vidal Quotes
-
-
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 -
I’m a fervent foe of water pollution, whether it is our own Hudson River or Philadelphia’s tap water.
GORE VIDAL -
Everything’s wrong on Wikipedia.
GORE VIDAL -
Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they’re scraping the top of the barrel.
GORE VIDAL -
As a schoolboy, I read most of Carl Sandburg’s six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln.
GORE VIDAL -
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 -
I am only at home in the present.
GORE VIDAL -
The truth about Pearl Harbour is obscured to this day. But it has been much studied.
GORE VIDAL -
You hear all this whining going on, ‘Where are our great writers?’ The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?
GORE VIDAL -
I am a novelist turned temporary adventurer, and I chose to write television, movies and plays for much the same reason that Henry Morgan selected the Spanish Main for his peculiar – and not dissimilar – sphere of operations.
GORE VIDAL -
Of all recent presidents, Clinton was expected to behave the most sensibly in economic matters. He understood how the economy works. But because he had used various dodges to stay out of the Vietnam War, he came to office ill at ease with the military.
GORE VIDAL -
Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
GORE VIDAL -
Temperamentally, I am suspicious of belonging to anything. When I ran for office, I debated seriously whether or not to run as an independent because I was not eager to be saddled with the Democratic Party, because any party label is committing.
GORE VIDAL -
Both Marx and Christ agree that in this life, a right action is consideration for the welfare of others.
GORE VIDAL -
In writing and politicking, it’s best not to think about it, just do it.
GORE VIDAL -
The first grown-up book that I read on my own was a nineteenth-century edition of ‘Tales from Livy’ that I’d found in my grandfather’s library.
GORE VIDAL -
Does one ever read a politician’s books?
GORE VIDAL -
Americans, in general, are ignorant, bigoted, and deeply unhappy with their declining incomes.
GORE VIDAL -
From April 1775 to July 1776, the undeclared war between England and its American colonies smoldered, flared up, appeared to sputter out… It was hardly, ever, a mass rebellion.
GORE VIDAL -
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 -
Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
GORE VIDAL -
Washington turned a blind eye to Al-Qaeda.
GORE VIDAL -
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 -
If you are a Representative and want to be a Senator, you must be careful not to do anything which might upset the various forces you need to harness to get elected.
GORE VIDAL -
All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.
GORE VIDAL -
The media can’t get anything straight.
GORE VIDAL