black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.

Gore Vidal

As a schoolboy, I read most of Carl Sandburg’s six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln.
GORE VIDAL

Myself Reading
Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.
GORE VIDAL

Attack Death Earth Ourselves Thinking
The truth about Pearl Harbour is obscured to this day. But it has been much studied.
GORE VIDAL

Day Study Truth Unknown
Everything’s wrong on Wikipedia.
GORE VIDAL

Wikipedia Wrong
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
While campaigning, I got to know many high-school teachers, and let me say that the good ones are the unsung heroes of our society, and the bad ones are the gravediggers.
GORE VIDAL

Goodness Known Ourselves Society
I’m all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
GORE VIDAL

Adult Consent Myself
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
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
GORE VIDAL

Enough Failure Success
For the record, I’m a Second World War veteran and served in the Pacific.
GORE VIDAL

Record Severe War World
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
I can’t name three first-rate literary critics in the United States. I’m told there are a few hidden away at universities, but they don’t print them in ‘The New York Times.’
GORE VIDAL

Criticism Literature Myself Name University
My father had lifelong contempt for politicians.
GORE VIDAL

Father Life Myself Politics
If you are a Representative and want to be a Senator, you must be careful not to do anything which might upset the various forces you need to harness to get elected.
GORE VIDAL

Election Force Yourself
The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.
GORE VIDAL

Class Genius heavy Ourselves Rule System
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
Boys don’t like girls around when they do boy things.
GORE VIDAL

Character Human Male Nature
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
The United States is a madhouse.
GORE VIDAL

Country Home Madness State
American history has fallen more and more into the hands of academics.
GORE VIDAL

Academics Fall Hands History
Envy is the central fact of American life.
GORE VIDAL

Central Fact Life
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
World War II made prosperous the United States, which had been undergoing a depression for a dozen years, and made very rich those magnates and their managers who govern the republic – with many a wink – in the people’s name.
GORE VIDAL

Depression Government Manager Name People Public Rich War
I know a lot of the Annapolis breed.
GORE VIDAL

Known Myself
It’s always best to stay out of other people’s divorces. And their civil wars.
GORE VIDAL

Best Divorce Finding Ourselves People Stay
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
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

Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Gore Vidal Quotes