Quotes About Gore Vidal

A year later, Ayatollah Bennett declared, "I find no merit in the [drug] legalizers' case. The simple fact is that drug use is wrong. And the moral argument, in the end, is the most compelling argument." Of course, what this dangerous comedian thinks is moral James Madison and the Virginia statesman and Rights-man George Mason would have thought dangerous nonsense, particularly when his "morality" abolishes their gift to all of us, the Bill of Rights.

weaving his verbal wreaths, in prose and verse, of marvellous poison ivy.

FBI slaughter of the innocents at Waco was a model Jacobin enterprise.

As we left the bar, we saw two men fighting at the wooden pump. One was short and stocky: he was pummelling a tall gangling creature with loose flapping arms ... Edwin Forrest was giving a much deserved beating to William de la Touche Clancey, the Tory sodomite.

This morning I reread the last section, trying to see it objectively, to match what I have put down with the memory I still bear of that first encounter with John Cave. I have not, I fear, got it. But this is as close as I can come to recalling long-vanished emotions and events.

gave Mr. Davis belladonna to stop the pain—

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.

'Empire of Self' is a loving portrait of a very difficult man. Jay Parini, himself a gifted novelist, poet and biographer, has gone very deep into the 'black energy' of Gore Vidal's relentless narcissism and megalomania. Parini envisions an epic battle between Vidal's angelic and demonic sides, yet there's very little of the angel in Vidal.

Apparently, 'conspiracy stuff' is now shorthand for unspeakable truth.

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.

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

To be attacked by a Gore Vidal, or an H.L. Mencken, one of the great wordsmiths of American criticism, while surely unpleasant, must have been oddly exhilarating for the poor souls on the receiving end. I, on the other hand, have the more dubious and prosaic distinction of being a regular target of Ian Millhiser.

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

What I am is something unbearable for the world of journalism and the world of cliches. I'm a realist.

The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.

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

Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an IQ of 60.

I can't name three first-rate literary critics in the United States. I'm told there are a few hidden away at universities, but they don't print them in 'The New York Times.'

The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.

The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.

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.

Truman Capote has made lying an art. A minor art.

Would it be anything like a literary disaster if Gore Vidal were to fall silent? Easy. No. In fact, there is something to be said for the idea.

The whole point to American journalism is what ought to be true is true. Since I ought to be arrogant, impressed with my social position, overwhelmed by my beauty, therefore I am.