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Every country should have at least one King Farouk.

Gore Vidal

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.
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Election Illumination Language Liberal Society Vote
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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Character Creation Impression Myself Settle Writing
All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.
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Children Expectation Forever
History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.
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Gossip History Hope Past True
Like the TV networks, once our government has a hit, it will be repeated over and over again.
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Government Repeat Willing
Ayn Rand is a rhetorician who writes novels I have never been able to read.
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Myself Novel Reading Writing
Remember, I’m West Point, where I was born. My father went there.
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Born Father Myself Remember
I cannot remember when I was not fascinated by Henry Adams.
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Fascination Myself Remember
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
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Death Friendship Myself Success
Americans have no idea of the extent of their government’s mischief… the number of military strikes we have made unprovoked, against other countries, since 1947 is more than 250.
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Age Country Government Ideas Mischief Provoke Strike
It is essential to naturalist doctrine that literature, to be good, must, finally, be the author’s experience worked out literally.
GORE VIDAL

Essential Experience Literature Natural Work
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.
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Contemporary Realize Young Yourself
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.’
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Criticism Literature Myself Name University
All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world.
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Missing Myself World
We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
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Artist Discover Emotion Important Known World
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.
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Age Believe Exercise Imagination Spirit

Every country should have at least one King Farouk.

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Every country should have at least one King Farouk.

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