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What I am is something unbearable for the world of journalism and the world of cliches. I’m a realist.

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

Death Department Nation State
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
The unfed mind devours itself.
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Devour Mindset
American history has fallen more and more into the hands of academics.
GORE VIDAL

Academics Fall Hands History
Baseball is the favorite American sport because it’s so slow. Any idiot can follow it. And just about any idiot can play it.
GORE VIDAL

Baseball Play Slow Sports
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
I’m all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
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Adult Consent Myself
You cannot deprive somebody of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, because that is a right – constitutional right.
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Happiness Liberty Life Right
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
By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he’s been bought ten times over.
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Himself Man Material President Time
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
After adolescence, if one’s life is sufficiently interesting, the desire to tell oneself stories diminishes.
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Diminish Interesting Life Oneself Story
I’m always an optimist!
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Myself Optimism
Americans, in general, are ignorant, bigoted, and deeply unhappy with their declining incomes.
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Decline Ignorance Income Sadness
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
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Death Friendship Myself Success
The first grown-up book that I read on my own was a nineteenth-century edition of ‘Tales from Livy’ that I’d found in my grandfather’s library.
GORE VIDAL

Book Edition Grown Library Reading

What I am is something unbearable for the world of journalism and the world of cliches. I’m a realist.

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What I am is something unbearable for the world of journalism and the world of cliches. I’m a realist.

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