Quotes About Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal was a man of immense literary talent, some of which he used well, some of which he wasted.

I got to know Gore Vidal quite well, up front and personal: his magnificent strengths and his appalling, almost other-worldly weaknesses.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist - I'm a conspiracy analyst.

The first grown-up book that I read on my own was a nineteenth-century edition of 'Tales from Livy' that I'd found in my grandfather's library.

On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.

As for my support for Obama, remember that I was brought up in Washington. It was an all-black city when I was a kid. And I've always been very pro-African-American - or whatever phrase we now use.

During the late '50s, I had worked on the script of Ben-Hur in an office next to that of the producer Sam Zimbalist.

Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.

I didn't mean to spend my life writing American history, which should have been taught in the schools, but I saw no alternative but to taking it on myself. I could think of a lot of cheerier things I'd rather be doing than analyzing George Washington and Aaron Burr. But it came to pass, that was my job, so I did it.

A genius with the IQ of a moron. GORE VIDAL, ON ANDY WARHOL

I read Noam Chomsky. I like some of Gore Vidal's stuff.

I came up in left-wing political writing. My first job out of college was working as Gore Vidal's fact checker.

I went to Europe to live in 1961. I'd never have written Julian if it hadn't been for the sequestered life that I led in Rome and the classical library at the America Academy.

I'm exactly as I appear. There is no warm lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water.

I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam -- good people, yes, but any religion based on a single, well, frenzied and virulent god, is not as useful to the human race as, say, Confucianism, which is not a religion but an ethical and educational system.

Seward appreciated the honest and open way that Stanton lied; it was the hallmark of the truly great lawyer, and demonstrated a professional mastery not unlike his own.

But a country which can be saved only by money is a lost country anyway. After all, what is the choice, really? On the one hand: catastrophic capitalism, and on the other a capital catastrophe.

Since the reading skills of the American people are the lowest in the First World, the general public is always easy prey to manipulation by television.

Apathy is just a lack of energy, which to me, is just the literal definition of decadence. So the energy gives out in a society - that is decadence.

Primarily, I am a prose writer with axes to grind, and the theatre is a good place to do the grinding in. I prefer comedy to 'serious' drama because I believe one can get the ax sharper on the comedic stone.

Mrs. Grant was the wife of a hero—a butcher-hero, of course, but still a hero to the stupid public.

He published his most original book, Patriotic Gore.

claims to abominate slavery and to regard secession as treason." "He will fight very well, sir," said General Scott, gloomily. "It is a matter of honor." "I see," said Lincoln, who plainly did not

A babble of words that no one understands now fills the airwaves, and language loses all meaning as we sink slowly, mindlessly, into herstory rather than history because most rapists are men, aren't they?