Until very recently, the artist was a magician who did his magic in public view but kept himself and his effects a matter of mystery.
GORE VIDALI’m always an optimist!
More Gore Vidal Quotes
-
-
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.
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 -
The human race is plainly nothing in eternity, but to us, in time, it is everything and ought not to die.
GORE VIDAL -
I cannot remember when I was not fascinated by Henry Adams.
GORE VIDAL -
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.
GORE VIDAL -
It 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.
GORE VIDAL -
What I like least about myself is my belligerence.
GORE VIDAL -
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.
GORE VIDAL -
TV news is not very instructive.
GORE VIDAL -
Write something, even if it’s just a suicide note.
GORE VIDAL -
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.
GORE VIDAL -
Boys don’t like girls around when they do boy things.
GORE VIDAL -
The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country – and we haven’t seen them since.
GORE VIDAL -
On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.
GORE VIDAL -
I think I have a normal threshold of anger, but it’s true that I am, by nature, belligerent.
GORE VIDAL