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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

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
Nearly everyone who goes into a campaign is not only eager for the place he hopes to fill but for what might come after.
GORE VIDAL

Filling Himself Hope Place
As for civil liberties, any one who is not vigilant may one day find himself living, if not in a police state, at least in a police city.
GORE VIDAL

Civil Finding Liberty Live Police
By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he’s been bought ten times over.
GORE VIDAL

Himself Man Material President Time
Each youth betrays considerable anxiety about the wedding night ahead.
GORE VIDAL

Anxiety Night Youth
The Pentagon talks about our power to ‘overkill’ Russia ten times, twenty times, perhaps forty-eight times. For my tax money, it is sufficient to overkill them once.
GORE VIDAL

Money Talk Tax Time
The American high school graduate is two years behind his English, French or German counterpart; in Alabama, God knows how far behind.
GORE VIDAL

God Graduation Known Yourself
Anybody who is stupid enough to want to be remembered deserves to be forgotten right now.
GORE VIDAL

Deserve Enough Stupidity
Policemen are seldom tried for their crimes, or indeed, held responsible for what they do, which disturbs the peace and causes distress among the orderly.
GORE VIDAL

Crime Disturb Order Peace Police Responsibility
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

Build Meaning Novel Sex
From April 1775 to July 1776, the undeclared war between England and its American colonies smoldered, flared up, appeared to sputter out… It was hardly, ever, a mass rebellion.
GORE VIDAL

Colony Mass Rebel War
Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.
GORE VIDAL

Attack Death Earth Ourselves Thinking
The United States is a madhouse.
GORE VIDAL

Country Home Madness State
I never said I was gay, because I don’t think anyone is.
GORE VIDAL

Myself Sexuality Thinking
Litigation takes the place of sex at middle age.
GORE VIDAL

Age One Liner Place Sex
Between fourteen and nineteen, I must have begun and abandoned six novels.
GORE VIDAL

Age Beginning Myself

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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