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By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he’s been bought ten times over.

Gore Vidal

Of all recent presidents, Clinton was expected to behave the most sensibly in economic matters. He understood how the economy works. But because he had used various dodges to stay out of the Vietnam War, he came to office ill at ease with the military.
GORE VIDAL

Economy Himself President Understand Work
I’m not paranoid, no. I’m different in that I have enemies. Very real ones.
GORE VIDAL

Different Enemy Oneself Reality
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
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
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.
GORE VIDAL

Colony Mass Rebel War
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
GORE VIDAL

Death Friendship Myself Success
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.
GORE VIDAL

Artist Discover Emotion Important Known World
As a schoolboy, I read most of Carl Sandburg’s six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln.
GORE VIDAL

Myself Reading
All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world.
GORE VIDAL

Missing Myself World
Ayn Rand is a rhetorician who writes novels I have never been able to read.
GORE VIDAL

Myself Novel Reading Writing
There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo- or heterosexual acts. Most people are a mixture of impulses if not practices.
GORE VIDAL

Impulse People Person Practice Sexual
On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.
GORE VIDAL

Death Department Nation State
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
After adolescence, if one’s life is sufficiently interesting, the desire to tell oneself stories diminishes.
GORE VIDAL

Diminish Interesting Life Oneself Story
I am only at home in the present.
GORE VIDAL

Home Oneself Present

By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he’s been bought ten times over.

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By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he’s been bought ten times over.

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Popular Authors

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