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Europe began as the relatively empty, uncivilized Wild West of Asia; then the Western Hemisphere became the Wild West of Europe. Now the sun has set in our West and risen once more in the East.

Gore Vidal

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

Dream Myself Writing
Each youth betrays considerable anxiety about the wedding night ahead.
GORE VIDAL

Anxiety Night Youth
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
I’m exactly as I appear. There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water.
GORE VIDAL

Appearance Cold Love Warm Water Yourself
We’re not a democracy.
GORE VIDAL

Democracy One Liner
The United States is the only civilized country in the world to class its teachers at the bottom of the social scale.
GORE VIDAL

Civilization Country Scale Social Teacher World
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
There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo- or heterosexual acts. Most people are a mixture of impulses if not practices.
GORE VIDAL

Impulse People Person Practice Sexual
I’m all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
GORE VIDAL

Adult Consent Myself
I can understand companionship.
GORE VIDAL

Companionship Understand
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
GORE VIDAL

Enough Failure Success
Temperamentally, I am suspicious of belonging to anything. When I ran for office, I debated seriously whether or not to run as an independent because I was not eager to be saddled with the Democratic Party, because any party label is committing.
GORE VIDAL

Commitment Democracy Government Independent Party Politics Serious
I was like everyone else when Obama was elected – optimistic.
GORE VIDAL

Myself Optimistic President
I think I have a normal threshold of anger, but it’s true that I am, by nature, belligerent.
GORE VIDAL

Angry Myself Nature Thinking
Like the TV networks, once our government has a hit, it will be repeated over and over again.
GORE VIDAL

Government Repeat Willing
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
I know a lot of the Annapolis breed.
GORE VIDAL

Known Myself
It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true.
GORE VIDAL

Age Believe Exercise Imagination Spirit
The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.
GORE VIDAL

Himself Interesting Money
Certainly ‘The Judgment of Paris’ was the novel in which I found my own voice.
GORE VIDAL

Finding Judgement Myself Novel Voice
Now you have people in Washington who have no interest in the country at all. They’re interested in their companies, their corporations grabbing Caspian oil.
GORE VIDAL

Company Corporation Country Interest People Yourself
It is essential to naturalist doctrine that literature, to be good, must, finally, be the author’s experience worked out literally.
GORE VIDAL

Essential Experience Literature Natural Work
Never have children, only grandchildren.
GORE VIDAL

Children Family Funny
I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.
GORE VIDAL

Appearance Chance Missing Television
History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.
GORE VIDAL

Gossip History Hope Past True
American history has fallen more and more into the hands of academics.
GORE VIDAL

Academics Fall Hands History

Europe began as the relatively empty, uncivilized Wild West of Asia; then the Western Hemisphere became the Wild West of Europe. Now the sun has set in our West and risen once more in the East.

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Europe began as the relatively empty, uncivilized Wild West of Asia; then the Western Hemisphere became the Wild West of Europe. Now the sun has set in our West and risen once more in the East.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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