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 VIDALIt 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.
More Gore Vidal Quotes
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I’m not a conspiracy theorist – I’m a conspiracy analyst.
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I am only at home in the present.
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TV news is not very instructive.
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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.
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All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world.
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Anybody who is stupid enough to want to be remembered deserves to be forgotten right now.
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After adolescence, if one’s life is sufficiently interesting, the desire to tell oneself stories diminishes.
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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.
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I cannot remember when I was not fascinated by Henry Adams.
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The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country – and we haven’t seen them since.
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Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
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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.
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Does one ever read a politician’s books?
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It is true, as Sartre once wrote, referring to French Army atrocities in Algeria, that the real tragedy in our time is that any of us can be, interchangeably, victim or torturer.
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To invent a war means that you’ve become a wartime president, and you can suspend much if not all of the Bill of Rights.
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