Quotes from Gore Vidal

The American high school graduate is two years behind his English, French or German counterpart; in Alabama, God knows how far behind.

There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party … and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat.

a writer must always tell the truth (unless he's a journalist)

History is idle gossip about a happening whose truth is lost the instant it has taken place.

As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days.

Southerners make good novelists: they have so many stories because they have so much family.

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

Love is a fan club with only two fans.

We affect one another quite enough merely by existing. Whenever the stars cross, or is it comets? fragments pass briefly from one orbit to another. On rare occasions there is total collision, but most often the two simply continue without incident, neither losing more than a particle to the other, in passing.

As I looked back over my life, I realized that I enjoyed nothing--not art, not sex--more than going to the movies.

Traitors who prevail are patriots; usurpers who succeed are divine emperors.

I suspect that one of the reasons we create fiction is to make sex exciting.

Never offend an enemy in a small way.

Never have children, only grandchildren.

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

Never pass up a chance to have sex or appear on television.

The malady of civilized man is his knowledge of death. The good artist, like the wise man, addresses himself to life and invests with his private vision the deeds and thoughts of men. The creation of a work of art, like an act of love, is our one small yes at the center of a vast no .

On the throne of the world, any delusion can become fact.

Nothing human is finally calculable; even to ourselves we are strange.

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

There is something about the state putting the power to bully into the hands of subnormal, sadistic apes that makes my blood boil.

Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head.

How hungrily we read about ourselves!

Reality is something the human race doesn't handle very well.