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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

In the writing of novels, there is the problem of how to shape a narrative.
GORE VIDAL

Novel Problem Shape Writing
Write something, even if it’s just a suicide note.
GORE VIDAL

Note Suicide Writing
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
GORE VIDAL

Death Friendship Myself Success
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.
GORE VIDAL

Invention President Suspend War
The Turner Diaries’ is a racist daydream by a former physics teacher writing under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald.
GORE VIDAL

Race Teacher Writing
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

Character Creation Impression Myself Settle Writing
At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation and prejudice.
GORE VIDAL

Chaos Moments Opinion Prejudice Public
Fifty percent of people won’t vote, and fifty percent don’t read newspapers. I hope it’s the same fifty percent.
GORE VIDAL

Hope Myself People Reading Vote
That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president.
GORE VIDAL

Bank Loyalty President
I was the most famous kid in the United States. That was 1936.
GORE VIDAL

Children Country Famous Past Time
It is very difficult for a writer of my generation, if he is honest, to pretend indifference to the work of Somerset Maugham. He was always so entirely there.
GORE VIDAL

Difficult Himself Honesty Pretend
Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they’re scraping the top of the barrel.
GORE VIDAL

Material Media Television Top
I am told the Cheney-Bush team dislikes their junta being compared to the Nazis. If they ceased behaving like Nazis, no comparison would come to mind.
GORE VIDAL

Behave Comparison Mindset Myself Team
The media can’t get anything straight.
GORE VIDAL

Media Straight
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 never wanted to be a writer. I mean, that’s the last thing I wanted.
GORE VIDAL

Dream Myself Writing

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

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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