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What I like least about myself is my belligerence.

Gore Vidal

In character, as it were, the writer settles for an impression of what happened rather than creating the sense of the thing happening.
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Character Creation Impression Myself Settle Writing
The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.
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Beautiful Language Ourselves Word
Litigation takes the place of sex at middle age.
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Age One Liner Place Sex
Some of my father’s fellow West Pointers once asked him why I turned out so well, his secret in raising me. And he said, ‘I never gave him any advice, and he never asked for any.’ We agreed on nothing, but we never quarreled once.
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Agreement Father Fellow Himself Raise Secret
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
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Enough Failure Success
It’s always best to stay out of other people’s divorces. And their civil wars.
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Best Divorce Finding Ourselves People Stay
Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
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Audience Drink Writing
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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Election Illumination Language Liberal Society Vote
That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.
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Busy Oneself Sadness Writing
Why not just eliminate the federal income tax?
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Elimination Income Tax
I cannot remember when I was not fascinated by Henry Adams.
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Fascination Myself Remember
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.
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Book Fact Kind Loose Opinion Popular Question Review Treat
I can’t name three first-rate literary critics in the United States. I’m told there are a few hidden away at universities, but they don’t print them in ‘The New York Times.’
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Criticism Literature Myself Name University
Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.
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Confidence Personality Style Yourself
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.
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Attack Death Earth Ourselves Thinking
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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Change Reality Time Torture Victim
While campaigning, I got to know many high-school teachers, and let me say that the good ones are the unsung heroes of our society, and the bad ones are the gravediggers.
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Goodness Known Ourselves Society
On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.
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Death Department Nation State
I’m always an optimist!
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Myself Optimism
What the police in their ignorance have not figured out is that they have lost all credibility since World War II. They are sort of parasites on the fringe of society and do no particular good for anyone except possibly themselves.
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Credible Exception Ignorance Possible Society
For the record, I’m a Second World War veteran and served in the Pacific.
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Record Severe War World
We’re not a democracy.
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Democracy One Liner
Obama just came swiftly out of nowhere, which was a relief to those of us who care about the Republic, and at first he seemed a very good thing.
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Goodness Government Himself Politics President Public relief
There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.
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Poem Police
Envy is the central fact of American life.
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Central Fact Life
Like the TV networks, once our government has a hit, it will be repeated over and over again.
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Government Repeat Willing
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.
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Impulse People Person Practice Sexual

What I like least about myself is my belligerence.

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What I like least about myself is my belligerence.

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