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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

All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.
GORE VIDAL

Children Expectation Forever
Today’s public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can’t read them either.
GORE VIDAL

Evidence Figure Reading Speech
Envy is the central fact of American life.
GORE VIDAL

Central Fact Life
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
I am a novelist turned temporary adventurer, and I chose to write television, movies and plays for much the same reason that Henry Morgan selected the Spanish Main for his peculiar – and not dissimilar – sphere of operations.
GORE VIDAL

Adventure Movie Myself Novel Operation Play Sphere Temporary
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
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
Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.
GORE VIDAL

Active Literature Lose Time Virtue World Writing
It is always a delicate matter, when a friend or acquaintance becomes president.
GORE VIDAL

Delicate Friendship President
Boys don’t like girls around when they do boy things.
GORE VIDAL

Character Human Male Nature
I cannot remember when I was not fascinated by Henry Adams.
GORE VIDAL

Fascination Myself Remember
You cannot deprive somebody of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, because that is a right – constitutional right.
GORE VIDAL

Happiness Liberty Life Right
I could be a lot happier. I could be the senator from Aerospace taking bribes, and be quite happy.
GORE VIDAL

Bribe Happiness Myself Quite
In writing and politicking, it’s best not to think about it, just do it.
GORE VIDAL

Best Thinking Writing
Anybody who is stupid enough to want to be remembered deserves to be forgotten right now.
GORE VIDAL

Deserve Enough Stupidity
It’s always best to stay out of other people’s divorces. And their civil wars.
GORE VIDAL

Best Divorce Finding Ourselves People Stay
It is very difficult for a writer of my generation, if he is honest, to pretend indifference to the work of Somerset Maugham. He was always so entirely there.
GORE VIDAL

Difficult Himself Honesty Pretend
Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
GORE VIDAL

Audience Drink Writing
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
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
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
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
A racial or religious or tribal identity is a kind of fact.
GORE VIDAL

Fact Identity Kind Race Religious Tribal
After adolescence, if one’s life is sufficiently interesting, the desire to tell oneself stories diminishes.
GORE VIDAL

Diminish Interesting Life Oneself Story
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
Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they’re both just aspirin.
GORE VIDAL

Choice Democracy Feeling Perspective Politics
Love is not my bag.
GORE VIDAL

Love One Liner

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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