It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
GORE VIDALThe only thing that I react really violently to is being misquoted.
More Gore Vidal Quotes
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Between fourteen and nineteen, I must have begun and abandoned six novels.
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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.
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After adolescence, if one’s life is sufficiently interesting, the desire to tell oneself stories diminishes.
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In classical times, it was a capital offense to speculate upon the hour of a king’s death or upon the identity of his successor.
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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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I know a lot of the Annapolis breed.
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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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Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they’re scraping the top of the barrel.
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Jack Kennedy very much enjoyed Fletcher Knebel’s thriller ‘Seven Days in May,’ later a film. The story: a jingo based on the real-life Admiral Arthur Radford plans a military coup to take over the White House.
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Does one ever read a politician’s books?
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I’m not a conspiracy theorist – I’m a conspiracy analyst.
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He who is last had best laugh.
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By the end of World War II, we were the most powerful and least damaged of the great nations. We also had most of the money. America’s hegemony lasted exactly five years.
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Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.
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American history has fallen more and more into the hands of academics.
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