I could be a lot happier. I could be the senator from Aerospace taking bribes, and be quite happy.
GORE VIDALSome of my father’s fellow West Pointers once asked him why I turned out so well, his secret in raising me. And he said, ‘I never gave him any advice, and he never asked for any.’ We agreed on nothing, but we never quarreled once.
More Gore Vidal Quotes
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After adolescence, if one’s life is sufficiently interesting, the desire to tell oneself stories diminishes.
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I am only at home in the present.
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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.
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At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation and prejudice.
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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.
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What I like least about myself is my belligerence.
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Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they’re scraping the top of the barrel.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I am not, at heart, a playwright.
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I was like everyone else when Obama was elected – optimistic.
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Boys don’t like girls around when they do boy things.
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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.
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The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.
GORE VIDAL