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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

What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke?
GORE VIDAL

Culture Joke Production See
I never wanted to be a writer. I mean, that’s the last thing I wanted.
GORE VIDAL

Dream Myself Writing
Now you have people in Washington who have no interest in the country at all. They’re interested in their companies, their corporations grabbing Caspian oil.
GORE VIDAL

Company Corporation Country Interest People Yourself
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
The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.
GORE VIDAL

Beautiful Language Ourselves Word
A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
GORE VIDAL

Better Narcissism Yourself
It’s odd to meet a rather elderly man who says, ‘I’ve been reading you all my life.’ It makes you feel a slight chill.
GORE VIDAL

Feeling Life Man Yourself
One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves.
GORE VIDAL

Choice Journey Oneself Road
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
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Enough Failure Success
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
It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true.
GORE VIDAL

Age Believe Exercise Imagination Spirit
The only thing that I react really violently to is being misquoted.
GORE VIDAL

Misunderstanding Quote Reaction Violence
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
There’s a lot to be said for being nouveau riche, and the Reagans mean to say it all.
GORE VIDAL

Identity Myself
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
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 am told the Cheney-Bush team dislikes their junta being compared to the Nazis. If they ceased behaving like Nazis, no comparison would come to mind.
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Behave Comparison Mindset Myself Team
American history has fallen more and more into the hands of academics.
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Academics Fall Hands History
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

Beginning Europe Ourselves Sun
I can understand companionship.
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Companionship Understand
From April 1775 to July 1776, the undeclared war between England and its American colonies smoldered, flared up, appeared to sputter out… It was hardly, ever, a mass rebellion.
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Colony Mass Rebel War
I remember the Bond movies when I was a child. They were silent then.
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Children Myself Remember Silence
I hate nobody.
GORE VIDAL

Hate Myself One Liner
Both Marx and Christ agree that in this life, a right action is consideration for the welfare of others.
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Action God Karma Life Right Welfare
I cannot remember when I was not fascinated by Henry Adams.
GORE VIDAL

Fascination Myself Remember
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
Like the TV networks, once our government has a hit, it will be repeated over and over again.
GORE VIDAL

Government Repeat Willing

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

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

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Popular Authors

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