Quotes from Gore Vidal

Between fourteen and nineteen, I must have begun and abandoned six novels.

Like most readers, I tend to skip the acknowledgements at the beginnings of books: the 'To-My-Wife-Without-Whose-Invaluable-Assistance' kind of thing.

anyone who sings about love and harmony and life [john lennon] is dangerous to someone who sings about death and killing and subduing [Nixon]

In the German concentration camps, Jews wore yellow stars while homosexuals wore pink lambdas.

What is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose putting down of opinions as though they were facts, and the treating of facts as though they were opinions.

A racial or religious or tribal identity is a kind of fact.

Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.

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.

It's odd to meet a rather elderly man who says, 'I've been reading you all my life.' It makes you feel a slight chill.

Baseball is the favorite American sport because it's so slow. Any idiot can follow it. And just about any idiot can play it.

The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.

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

Every country should have at least one King Farouk.

Policemen are seldom tried for their crimes, or indeed, held responsible for what they do, which disturbs the peace and causes distress among the orderly.

I wanted to be a politician and a movie star. But I was born a writer. If you're born that, you can't change it. You're going to do it whether you want to or not.~

I'm not for real revolutions, because they always bring you the opposite of what you want. You very seldom get what you want if you have a violent revolution.

When you control opinion, as corporate America controls opinion in the United States by owning the media, you can make the masses believe almost anything you want, and guide them as you please.

Ideally, the writer needs no audience other than the few who understand that it is immodest and greedy to want more.

The unfed mind devours itself.

A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is an ability to articulate human relationships.

TV news is not very instructive.

The Pentagon talks about our power to 'overkill' Russia ten times, twenty times, perhaps forty-eight times. For my tax money, it is sufficient to overkill them once.

People in my situation get to read about themselves whether they want to or not. It's generally wrong. Or oversimplified - which is sometimes useful.

I think the Chinese will say the hell with you and pull their money out of the United States. That's the end of our wars.