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In classical times, it was a capital offense to speculate upon the hour of a king’s death or upon the identity of his successor.

Gore Vidal

Gossip is conversation about people.
GORE VIDAL

Conversation Gossip People
What is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose putting down of opinions as though they were facts, and the treating of facts as though they were opinions.
GORE VIDAL

Book Fact Kind Loose Opinion Popular Question Review Treat
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.
GORE VIDAL

Evidence Figure Reading Speech
Write something, even if it’s just a suicide note.
GORE VIDAL

Note Suicide Writing
The unfed mind devours itself.
GORE VIDAL

Devour Mindset
The human race is plainly nothing in eternity, but to us, in time, it is everything and ought not to die.
GORE VIDAL

Death Forever Human Race
The greatest pleasure when I started making money was not buying cars or yachts but finding myself able to have as many freshly typed drafts as possible.
GORE VIDAL

Finding Greatness Pleasure Possible
The media can’t get anything straight.
GORE VIDAL

Media Straight
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 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
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
Litigation takes the place of sex at middle age.
GORE VIDAL

Age One Liner Place Sex
Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.
GORE VIDAL

Democracy Form High Ourselves Scale
Americans, in general, are ignorant, bigoted, and deeply unhappy with their declining incomes.
GORE VIDAL

Decline Ignorance Income Sadness
Why not just eliminate the federal income tax?
GORE VIDAL

Elimination Income Tax
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

In classical times, it was a capital offense to speculate upon the hour of a king’s death or upon the identity of his successor.

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In classical times, it was a capital offense to speculate upon the hour of a king’s death or upon the identity of his successor.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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