Certainly ‘The Judgment of Paris’ was the novel in which I found my own voice.
GORE VIDALSome writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
More Gore Vidal Quotes
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Love is not my bag.
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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.
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Ayn Rand is a rhetorician who writes novels I have never been able to read.
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The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.
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The United States is the only civilized country in the world to class its teachers at the bottom of the social scale.
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Nearly everyone who goes into a campaign is not only eager for the place he hopes to fill but for what might come after.
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Like the TV networks, once our government has a hit, it will be repeated over and over again.
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Why not just eliminate the federal income tax?
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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.
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Americans, in general, are ignorant, bigoted, and deeply unhappy with their declining incomes.
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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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Primarily, I am a prose writer with axes to grind, and the theatre is a good place to do the grinding in. I prefer comedy to ‘serious’ drama because I believe one can get the ax sharper on the comedic stone.
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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.
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There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.
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In character, as it were, the writer settles for an impression of what happened rather than creating the sense of the thing happening.
GORE VIDAL