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I can’t name three first-rate literary critics in the United States. I’m told there are a few hidden away at universities, but they don’t print them in ‘The New York Times.’

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

Believe Comedy Goodness Place Stone Theatre Writing
It is true, as Sartre once wrote, referring to French Army atrocities in Algeria, that the real tragedy in our time is that any of us can be, interchangeably, victim or torturer.
GORE VIDAL

Change Reality Time Torture Victim
A racial or religious or tribal identity is a kind of fact.
GORE VIDAL

Fact Identity Kind Race Religious Tribal
I don’t even read most reviews, unless there is a potential lawsuit on view.
GORE VIDAL

Law Myself Potential Reading Review View
I’m always an optimist!
GORE VIDAL

Myself Optimism
Some have deplored Lincoln’s indifference to Christianity. But it was not religion, it was religiosity that put him off.
GORE VIDAL

Difference Himself Religion
Anybody who is stupid enough to want to be remembered deserves to be forgotten right now.
GORE VIDAL

Deserve Enough Stupidity
That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president.
GORE VIDAL

Bank Loyalty President
There’s a lot to be said for being nouveau riche, and the Reagans mean to say it all.
GORE VIDAL

Identity Myself
I’m all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
GORE VIDAL

Adult Consent Myself
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
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
What the police in their ignorance have not figured out is that they have lost all credibility since World War II. They are sort of parasites on the fringe of society and do no particular good for anyone except possibly themselves.
GORE VIDAL

Credible Exception Ignorance Possible Society
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.
GORE VIDAL

Enjoyment Life Military Reality Story
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
There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.
GORE VIDAL

Poem Police

I can’t name three first-rate literary critics in the United States. I’m told there are a few hidden away at universities, but they don’t print them in ‘The New York Times.’

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I can’t name three first-rate literary critics in the United States. I’m told there are a few hidden away at universities, but they don’t print them in ‘The New York Times.’

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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