Quotes from Gore Vidal

Heroes must see to their own fame. No one else will.

Since nothing is free, to each his price.

If Henry Miller often sounded like a village idiot, it is because, like Whitman, he was the rest of the village as well.

No one can ever love us quite so much as we love ourselves.

Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.

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

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.

Americans tend to play different roles, hoping that somehow they'll stumble on the right one.

The worst thing to happen to Lincoln - aside from the unfortunate incident at Ford's theatre - was to fall into the hands of Carl Sandburg.

Nothing that ever was changes. Yet nothing that is can ever be the same as what went before.

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.

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

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.

Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.

Let the dust take me when the adventure's done and I shall make the dust glitter for all eternity with my marvelous fury.

To be categorized is, simply, to be enslaved

Is it not better for a man never to have been born? Certaintly not The response was brisk. Just to be able to study the sky is reason enough to be alive. Unfortunately, I can't see the sky. Then listen to music.

The public is always relieved to find that once the chief officers of state are elected they do not sincerely want change.

There are, then, three sorts of religious experiences. The ancient rites, which are essentially propitiatory. The mysteries, which purge the soul and allow us to glimpse eternity. And philosophy, which attempts to define not only the material world but to suggest practical ways to the good life, as well as attempting to synthesize (as Iamblichos does so beautifully) all true religion in a single comprehensive system.

A court is the most depressing place on earth. Wherever there is a throne, one may observe in rich detail every folly and wickedness of which man is capable, enameled with manners and gilded with hypocrisy.

The planet Venus, a circle of silver in a green sky, pierced the edge of the evening while the wintry woods darkened about me and in the stillness the regular sound of my footsteps striking the pavement was like a the rhythmic beating of a giant stone heart.

Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players. … I have 10 or so, and that's a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.

Always beware of the fact, that the only thing hindering an all out revolution is your fear of losing the scraps they throw at you.--Twitter post, July 29, 2012

It is curious how little interested we are in the sexual desires of those who do not attract us.