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If you are a Representative and want to be a Senator, you must be careful not to do anything which might upset the various forces you need to harness to get elected.

Gore Vidal

We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
GORE VIDAL

Artist Discover Emotion Important Known World
History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.
GORE VIDAL

Gossip History Hope Past True
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
The greatest pleasure when I started making money was not buying cars or yachts but finding myself able to have as many freshly typed drafts as possible.
GORE VIDAL

Finding Greatness Pleasure Possible
Boys don’t like girls around when they do boy things.
GORE VIDAL

Character Human Male Nature
Why not just eliminate the federal income tax?
GORE VIDAL

Elimination Income Tax
Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.
GORE VIDAL

Democracy Form High Ourselves Scale
The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity – much less dissent.
GORE VIDAL

Elimination Management Media Object Opinion World
I can understand companionship.
GORE VIDAL

Companionship Understand
I was like everyone else when Obama was elected – optimistic.
GORE VIDAL

Myself Optimistic President
I know a lot of the Annapolis breed.
GORE VIDAL

Known Myself
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 more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.
GORE VIDAL

Himself Interesting Money
Litigation takes the place of sex at middle age.
GORE VIDAL

Age One Liner Place Sex
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
GORE VIDAL

Death Friendship Myself Success
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
I’m always an optimist!
GORE VIDAL

Myself Optimism
The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.
GORE VIDAL

Natural President Rise Suspicion
I am not, at heart, a playwright.
GORE VIDAL

Heart Personality Play
The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country – and we haven’t seen them since.
GORE VIDAL

Country Finding People State
Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.
GORE VIDAL

Hope Newspaper Oneself People Reading
In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you’re a great writer, you must say that you are.
GORE VIDAL

Greatness Loud Race Yourself
To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours, imitating kindly trees, as they watch for birds.
GORE VIDAL

Bird Man Stand Time
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
To preserve the human race, it is now necessary to reorganize society. To this end, an Authority must be created with the power to control human population, to redistribute food, to purify air, water, soil, to re-pattern the cities.
GORE VIDAL

Food Human Pattern Population Preserve Race Recognition
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
GORE VIDAL

Enough Failure Success
After adolescence, if one’s life is sufficiently interesting, the desire to tell oneself stories diminishes.
GORE VIDAL

Diminish Interesting Life Oneself Story

If you are a Representative and want to be a Senator, you must be careful not to do anything which might upset the various forces you need to harness to get elected.

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If you are a Representative and want to be a Senator, you must be careful not to do anything which might upset the various forces you need to harness to get elected.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Gore Vidal Quotes