black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

In writing and politicking, it’s best not to think about it, just do it.

Gore Vidal

I remember the Bond movies when I was a child. They were silent then.
GORE VIDAL

Children Myself Remember Silence
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
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
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
Some 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.
GORE VIDAL

Agreement Father Fellow Himself Raise Secret
Gossip is conversation about people.
GORE VIDAL

Conversation Gossip People
Boys don’t like girls around when they do boy things.
GORE VIDAL

Character Human Male Nature
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
In essence, Clinton’s Anti-Terrorism Act would set up a national police force, over the long-dead bodies of the founders.
GORE VIDAL

Act Finding Force National Police
My father had lifelong contempt for politicians.
GORE VIDAL

Father Life Myself Politics
What the police in their ignorance have not figured out is that they have lost all credibility since World War II. They are sort of parasites on the fringe of society and do no particular good for anyone except possibly themselves.
GORE VIDAL

Credible Exception Ignorance Possible Society
Every country should have at least one King Farouk.
GORE VIDAL

Country Oneself
Until very recently, the artist was a magician who did his magic in public view but kept himself and his effects a matter of mystery.
GORE VIDAL

Artist Himself Magic Mystery Public View
I cannot remember when I was not fascinated by Henry Adams.
GORE VIDAL

Fascination Myself Remember
The Turner Diaries’ is a racist daydream by a former physics teacher writing under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald.
GORE VIDAL

Race Teacher Writing
The unfed mind devours itself.
GORE VIDAL

Devour Mindset
I never said I was gay, because I don’t think anyone is.
GORE VIDAL

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

Natural President Rise Suspicion
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
GORE VIDAL

Death Friendship Myself Success
Jack Kennedy very much enjoyed Fletcher Knebel’s thriller ‘Seven Days in May,’ later a film. The story: a jingo based on the real-life Admiral Arthur Radford plans a military coup to take over the White House.
GORE VIDAL

Enjoyment Life Military Reality Story
Remember, I’m West Point, where I was born. My father went there.
GORE VIDAL

Born Father Myself Remember
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
As for my support for Obama, remember that I was brought up in Washington. It was an all-black city when I was a kid. And I’ve always been very pro-African-American – or whatever phrase we now use.
GORE VIDAL

Children Country Myself Support
I’ve yet to read a memoir by anyone I’ve known at all well that came anywhere near to the truth.
GORE VIDAL

Myself Reading Truth
I can understand companionship.
GORE VIDAL

Companionship Understand
All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world.
GORE VIDAL

Missing Myself World
Does one ever read a politician’s books?
GORE VIDAL

Book Oneself Politics Reading

In writing and politicking, it’s best not to think about it, just do it.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

In writing and politicking, it’s best not to think about it, just do it.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Gore Vidal Quotes