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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

In character, as it were, the writer settles for an impression of what happened rather than creating the sense of the thing happening.
GORE VIDAL

Character Creation Impression Myself Settle Writing
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.
GORE VIDAL

Contemporary Realize Young Yourself
What I am is something unbearable for the world of journalism and the world of cliches. I’m a realist.
GORE VIDAL

Journalism Reality World
There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.
GORE VIDAL

Human Myself People Problem Solution
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
Until the rise of American advertising, it never occurred to anyone anywhere in the world that the teenager was a captive in a hostile world of adults.
GORE VIDAL

Adult Advertise Captive Rise World
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
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
There is only one party in the United States: the Property party… and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat.
GORE VIDAL

Democracy Party Politics Republic
Gossip is conversation about people.
GORE VIDAL

Conversation Gossip People
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
TV news is not very instructive.
GORE VIDAL

Instruction One Liner
Love is not my bag.
GORE VIDAL

Love One Liner
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
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 not a conspiracy theorist – I’m a conspiracy analyst.
GORE VIDAL

Conspiracy Myself Theory

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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