G. Vidal Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

Deceit and lying make me feel vulnerable. — Lisa 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

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

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

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

If you don't look good, we don't look good. — Vidal Sassoon

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

Since I am a loyal American, I am not supposed to tell you why this has taken place, but then it is not usual for us to examine why anything happens; we simply accuse others of motiveless malignity. "We are good," G.W. proclaims, "They are evil," which wraps that one up in a neat package. Later, Bush himself put, as it were, the bow on the package in an address to a joint session of Congress where he shared with them - as well as with the rest of us somewhere over the Beltway - his profound knowledge of Islam's wiles and ways: "They hate what they see right here in this Chamber." I suspect a million Americans nodded sadly in front of their TV sets. "Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms, our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." At this plangent moment what American's gorge did not rise like a Florida chad to the bait? — Gore Vidal

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

My idea was to cut shape into the hair, to use it like fabric and take away everything that was superfluous. — Vidal Sassoon

I'm not paranoid, no. I'm different in that I have enemies. Very real ones. — 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 believe it's my pastoral duty to convert friends to atheism. — Gore Vidal

A positive attitude toward life is always better. — Lisa 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

Vidal had his exuberant and stately tower in the most elegant and elevated part of Pedralbes, surrounded by hills, trees, and fairy-tale skies. I would have my sinister tower rising above the oldest, darkest streets of the city, surrounded by the miasmas and the shadows of that necropolis which poets and murderers had once called the Rose of Fire. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

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

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

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

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