Best Gore Vidal Quotes & Sayings

In almost every case (where the United States has fought wars) our overwhelming commitment to freedom, democracy and human rights has required us to support those regimes that would deny freedom, democracy and human rights to their own people. — Gore Vidal

Most of our writers tend to be recorders. — Gore Vidal

Everybody has two legs, two lobes to the brain which is why we tend to be interested in symmetry, always balancing things. — Gore Vidal

I'd still like to be the President, of course, and I think the best way to do that would be to raise an army and seize the Capital. This strikes me as true democracy. — Gore Vidal

Without communism ... our state lacks a Wizard of Oz to terrify all the people all the time. So the state looks inward, at the true enemy, who turns out to be - who else? the people of the United States. — Gore Vidal

Once people get hung up on theology, they've lost sanity forever. More people have been killed in the name of Jesus Christ than any other name in the history of the world. — Gore Vidal

The last best hope of earth, two trillion dollars in debt, is spinning out of control, and all we can do is stare at a flickering cathode-ray tube as Ollie answers questions on TV while the press, resolutely irrelevant as ever, asks politicians if they have committed adultery. From V-J Day 1945 to this has been, my fellow countrymen, a perfect nightmare. — Gore Vidal

That famous writer's block is a myth as far as I'm concerned. I think bad writers must have a great difficulty writing. They don't want to do it. They have become writers out of reasons of ambition. It must be a great strain to them to make marks on a page when they really have nothing much to say, and don't enjoy doing it. I'm not so sure what I have to say but I certainly enjoy making sentences. — Gore Vidal

That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers. — Gore Vidal

God, or what have you, will not be found at the far end of a syllogism, no matter how brilliantly phrased or conceived. — Gore Vidal

I used to read Gore Vidal books and think I was cool. — Matt Smith

Love is a fan club with only two fans. — Gore Vidal

Ideally, of course, a relationship is best, but then how many people are capable of deep feeling? Practically none. — Gore Vidal

If one starts with the anatomical difference, which even a patriarchal Viennese novelist was able to see was destiny, then one begins to understand why men and women don't get on very well within marriage, or indeed in any exclusive sort of long-range sexual relationship. He is designed to make as many babies as possible with as many different women as he can get his hands on, while she is designed to take time off from her busy schedule as astronaut or role model to lay an egg and bring up the result. Male and female are on different sexual tracks, and that cannot be changed by the Book or any book. Since all our natural instincts are carefully perverted from birth, it is no wonder that we tend to be, if not all of us serial killers, killers of our own true nature. — Gore Vidal

He who is last had best laugh. — Gore Vidal

,I have never visited any city in the world where I was not told that I just missed the golden age. I seem never to be on time. Cyrus Sitema — Gore Vidal

Washington turned a blind eye to Al-Qaeda. — Gore Vidal

It was of course Jefferson's gift at one time or another to put with eloquence the "right" answer to every moral question. In practice, however, he seldom deviated from an opportunistic course, calculated to bring him power. — Gore Vidal

American laws don't work, but at least the laws of physics might work. — Gore Vidal

I have begun writing what I have said I'd never write, a memoir ("I am not my own subject," I used to say with icy superiority). — Gore Vidal

Before the cards that one is dealt by life are the cards that fate has dealt: one's family. — Gore Vidal

The most interesting thing about writing is the way that it obliterates time. Three hours seem like three minutes. Then there is the business of surprise. I never know what is coming next. The phrase that sounds in the head changes when it appears on the page. Then I start probing it with a pen, finding new meanings. Sometimes I burst out laughing at what is happening as I twist and turn sentences. Strange business, all in all. One never gets to the end of it. That's why I go on, I suppose. To see what the next sentences I write will be. — Gore Vidal

Persuading the people to vote against their own best interests has been the awesome genius of the
American political elite from the beginning. — Gore Vidal

Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society ... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil. — Gore Vidal

In writing and politicking, it's best not to think about it, just do it. — Gore Vidal

An important governorship used to be the best springboard for would-be presidents. — Gore Vidal

Do nothing that is not natural - and ritual is natural - and all will be for the best. — Gore Vidal

The best novelist of my generation is an Italian living in Paris, still working and improving - Italo Calvino. — Gore Vidal

I say his version because there is no such thing as a true account of anything. Each sees the world from his own vantage point. Needless to say, a throne is not the best place from which to view anything except the backs of prostrate men. — Gore Vidal

We do not want to old to be sharper than we. It is bad enough that they were there first, and got the best things. — Gore Vidal

Finally, the physical damage Osama and friends can do us - terrible as it has been thus far - is as nothing as to what he is doing to our liberties. Once alienated, an "unalienable right" is apt to be forever lost, in which case we are no longer even remotely the last best hope of earth but merely a seedy imperial state whose citizens are kept in line by SWAT teams and whose way of death, not life, is universally imitated. — Gore Vidal

You can improve your talent, but your talent is a given, a mysterious constant. You must make it the best of its kind. — Gore Vidal

Eisenhower's career demonstrated how it is possible to fool all the people all the time ... 'I may be stupid,' he once said at a press conference, 'but at least I'm sincere!' Actually, he was neither, but it suited his purpose to play the part of the bumbling man of good will who was 'not an expert in these matters' but somehow would do his best. — Gore Vidal

I might become an ascetic, live in India. A little rice is about the best I can do now. — Gore Vidal

It's always best to stay out of other people's divorces. And their civil wars. — Gore Vidal

I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon. I cannot understand the love affair. — Gore Vidal

He's a full-fledged housewife from Kansas with all the prejudices. — Gore Vidal

By and large, serious fiction was the work of victims who portrayed victims for an audience of victims who, it was oddly assumed, would want to see their lives realistically portrayed. — Gore Vidal

I write in different styles because I hear different voices in my head. It would be boring to have always the same voice, point of view. — Gore Vidal

...weaving his verbal wreaths, in prose and verse, of marvellous poison ivy. — Gore Vidal

The novel ceases to be looked at as a novel. Such is the overwhelming power of motion pictures. Gore Vidal pointed out that the movies are the only thing anybody's really interested in. The association with movies and movie money can, and certainly did in my case, occlude a novel as a novel. — William Monahan

We are in danger of government by professional office-holders ... — Gore Vidal

My memory plays me odd tricks these days [...] Age spares us nothing, old friend. Like ancient trees, we die from the top. — Gore Vidal

I believe it's my pastoral duty to convert friends to atheism. — Gore Vidal

By 1948, the Italians had begun to pull themselves together, demonstrating once more their astonishing ability to cope with disaster which is so perfectly balanced by their absolute inability to deal with success — Gore Vidal

I'm not paranoid, no. I'm different in that I have enemies. Very real ones. — Gore Vidal

If you want to rise in politics in the United States, there is one subject you must stay away from, and that is politics. — Gore Vidal

The Americans are clever. They thoroughly understand things that have to do with money, war, death, sickness. And there is also a real tradition of skepticism in this country. — Gore Vidal

Like the TV networks, once our government has a hit, it will be repeated over and over again. — Gore Vidal

A year later, Ayatollah Bennett declared, "I find no merit in the [drug] legalizers' case. The simple fact is that drug use is wrong. And the moral argument, in the end, is the most compelling argument." Of course, what this dangerous comedian thinks is moral James Madison and the Virginia statesman and Rights-man George Mason would have thought dangerous nonsense, particularly when his "morality" abolishes their gift to all of us, the Bill of Rights. — Gore Vidal

Leggett feels that to be excitingly right in general is better than to be dully accurate in particular. That is why he is such an effective journalist. — Gore Vidal

In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are. — Gore Vidal

In actual fact, I have always been a conservative cross, borne sadly by liberal friends. — Gore Vidal

Whether you have an abortion, what you put in your own body, with whom you have sex - these are not the affairs of the state. A government does not exist to control the citizens. When it does, it is a tyranny, and must be fought. The tree of liberty, Jefferson warned us, must be refreshed with the blood of tyrants and patriots. — Gore Vidal

The word 'radical' derives from the Latin word for root. Therefore, if you want to get to the root of anything you must be radical. It is no accident that the word has now been totally demonized ... — Gore Vidal

Contrary to vulgar legend the lives of great ballerinas are not entirely given up to a few minutes of graceful movement every night followed by champagne drunk out of their toeshoes till dawn, in the company of financiers ... no, most of their time is spent in filthy rehearsal halls, inhaling dust, or else in class, daily, year in year out, practicing, practicing even after they are already prima ballerinas. — Gore Vidal

Each youth betrays considerable anxiety about the wedding night ahead. — Gore Vidal

I never reread a text until I have finished the first draft. Otherwise it's too discouraging. — Gore Vidal

All I want is that Americans still be able to read the alphabet in a hundred years. I am not very ambitious. — Gore Vidal

The whole book experience was a look into another world, the world of Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer. — Jerry Kramer

... the American reader cannot bear a surprise. He knows that this is the greatest country on earth ... and evidence to the contrary is not admissible. That means no inconvenient facts, no new information. If you really want the reader's attention, you must flatter him. Make his prejudices your own. Tell him things he already knows. He will love your soundness. — Gore Vidal

I am only at home in the present. — Gore Vidal