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Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they’re both just aspirin.

Gore Vidal

I am a novelist turned temporary adventurer, and I chose to write television, movies and plays for much the same reason that Henry Morgan selected the Spanish Main for his peculiar – and not dissimilar – sphere of operations.
GORE VIDAL

Adventure Movie Myself Novel Operation Play Sphere Temporary
It’s odd to meet a rather elderly man who says, ‘I’ve been reading you all my life.’ It makes you feel a slight chill.
GORE VIDAL

Feeling Life Man Yourself
Why not just eliminate the federal income tax?
GORE VIDAL

Elimination Income Tax
That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.
GORE VIDAL

Busy Oneself Sadness Writing
Boys don’t like girls around when they do boy things.
GORE VIDAL

Character Human Male Nature
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

Election Illumination Language Liberal Society Vote
I think I have a normal threshold of anger, but it’s true that I am, by nature, belligerent.
GORE VIDAL

Angry Myself Nature Thinking
In essence, Clinton’s Anti-Terrorism Act would set up a national police force, over the long-dead bodies of the founders.
GORE VIDAL

Act Finding Force National Police
Having no contemporaries left means you cannot say, ‘Well, so-and-so will like this,’ which you do when you’re younger. You realize there is no so-and-so anymore. You are your own so-and-so. There is a bleak side to it.
GORE VIDAL

Contemporary Realize Young Yourself
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.
GORE VIDAL

Adult Advertise Captive Rise World
We’re not a democracy.
GORE VIDAL

Democracy One Liner
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
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Enough Failure Success
Each youth betrays considerable anxiety about the wedding night ahead.
GORE VIDAL

Anxiety Night Youth
Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.
GORE VIDAL

Active Literature Lose Time Virtue World Writing
What I like least about myself is my belligerence.
GORE VIDAL

Character Myself Nature
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
GORE VIDAL

Death Friendship Myself Success

Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they’re both just aspirin.

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Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they’re both just aspirin.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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