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Gore Vidal Quotes - Page 10

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What other culture could have produced someone like Hemmingway and not seen the joke?

What other culture could have produced someone like Hemmingway and not seen the joke?

Other Cultures, Culture, Literature

"United States: Essays 1952-1992 (Edmund Wilson: This Critic and This Gin and These Shoes)". Book by Gore Vidal, May 18, 1993.

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

Firsts, Discouraging, Finished

Gore Vidal, Richard Peabody, Lucinda Ebersole (2005). “Conversations with Gore Vidal”, p.54, Univ. Press of Mississippi

Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge. What he takes in he takes in normally the way any person takes in experience. But it is what is done with it in his mind, if he is a real writer, that makes his art.

Art, Real, Writing

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

Writing, Thinking, Just Do It

To speak today of a famous novelist is like speaking of a famous cabinetmaker or speedboat designer. Adjective is inappropriate to noun.

Novelists, Adjectives, Nouns

Gore Vidal (2007). “Point to Point Navigation”, p.2, Vintage

Which other major religion is based on the Godhead incarnate being whipped, tacked to a cross, stabbed? Only the Marquis de Sade could have made up a sicker religion. It's no wonder that those brought up in such a culture hate life and enjoy inflicting pain. All societies are sick but some are sicker than others. Christian societies are certainly the sickest.

Christian, Pain, Hate

When you are brought up in a zoo, you know what's going on in the monkey house. You see a couple of monkeys loose and one is President and one is Vice President, you know it's trouble. Monkeys make trouble.

Zoos, Couple, House

"Gore Vidal on the Media and the American People". Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. August 1, 2012.

When you come from a family that has been political, and I was brought up by my grandfather in the Senate, my father was in Roosevelt's Cabinet, this is not the class that produces writers or reflective people.

Father, Class, People

"Fresh Air Remembers Writer And Critic Gore Vidal". www.npr.org. August 2, 2012.

Commercialism is doing well that which should not be done at all.

Business, Useless Stuff, Time Management

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.

Fiction, Want, Serious

Gore Vidal (1994). “Screening History”

...you will do more harm than good by attempting to supplant old dogmas and customs with new dogmas. It will be the same in the end except that the old is less militant, less dangerous than a new order imposed by enthusiasts.

Order, Dogma, Ends

What we are is seldom what we want to be, while what we want to be is either denied us or changes with the seasons.

Want, Seasons, Denied

Gore Vidal (2002). “Creation: a novel”, Doubleday Books

Sex was a great no-no for Americans, so that was obviously an attraction to the writers, and since sex is a great part of most people's lives, it's a great subject.

Sex, People, Subjects

Source: www.esquire.com

Lonely children often have imaginary playmates but I was never lonely; rather, I was solitary, and wanted no company at all other than books and movies, and my own imagination.

Lonely, Children, Book

Gore Vidal (1994). “Screening History”

Ronald Reagan: a triumph of the embalmer's art.

Art, Triumph, Politics

Quoted in Observer, 26 Apr. 1981

I am glad my life is coming to an end. To think that it might last another five hundred years, now that would be terrible, in my case.

Thinking, Years, Would Be

"The End of Gore Vidal". Interview with Lila Azam Zanganeh, www.guernicamag.com. August 15, 2012.

USA is suffering between imperialists and anti-imperialists. That is the situation. The most powerful country in the world is on its way back to the Stone Age.

Country, Powerful, Usa

Some of my father's fellow West Pointers once asked him why I turned out so well, his secret in raising me. And he said, "I never gave him any advice, and he never asked for any." We agreed on nothing, but we never quarreled once.

Father, Advice, Secret

"Gore Vidal: What I've Learned". Interview with Mike Sager, www.esquire.com. 2008.

It is reasonable to assume that, by and large, what is not read now will not be read, ever. It is also reasonable to assume that practically nothing that is read now will be read later.

Literature, Assuming, Reasonable

Gore Vidal (1982). “Pink triangle and yellow star, and other essays (1976-1982)”

People have forgotten the effects of prohibition. We have become the United Statesof Amnesia.

People, Forgotten, Prohibition

If you're not part of that club, as I certainly am not, you are not presidential.

Presidential, Clubs, Ifs

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

You can't be both a writer and a politician, at least not a good writer. A writer must always tell the truth as he sees it. And the politician must never give the game away.

Games, Giving, Telling The Truth

"Fresh Air Remembers Writer And Critic Gore Vidal". www.npr.org. August 2, 2012.

It is difficult to find a reputable American historian who will acknowledge the crude fact that a Franklin Roosevelt, say, wanted to be President merely to wield power, to be famed and to be feared. To learn this simple fact one must wade through a sea of evasions: history as sociology, leaders as teachers, bland benevolence as a motive force, when, finally, power is an end to itself, and the instinctive urge to prevail the most important single human trait, the necessary force without which no city was built, no city destroyed.

Teacher, Simple, Sea

Universities are filled with poets and novelists conducting demure and careful lives in imitation of Eliot and Forster and those others who (through what seems to be have been discretion) made it.

Novelists, Imitation, Poet

Gore Vidal (1968). “Sex, Death, and Money”

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.

Stupid, Men, Play

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