Gore Vidal (1925–2012,) originally Eugene Luther Gore Vidal, Jr., was an American novelist, essayist, dramatist, and polemicist. A frequent guest on television opinion programs, he was also celebrated for his outspoken political opinions and his witty and satirical observations.
Vidal was born in West Point, New York. His first novel, Williwaw (1946,) was based on his experiences serving in the United States Army Reserve Corps during World War II. The City and the Pillar (1948,) a candid account of homosexuality, was a bestseller.
Vidal established himself as a novelist with satirical comedies such as Myra Breckenridge (1968,) its sequel Myron (1974,) and Creation (1981.) His political novels include Washington D.C. (1967,) and the trilogy Burr (1976,) 1876 (1976,) and Lincoln (1984.)
Vidal was also an actor and wrote for television, film, and the stage. A writer of teleplays, he turned briefly to the theatre in 1957 and wrote the successful adaptations Visit to a Small Planet (1957) and The Best Man (1960,) a satire on American politics.
Vidal’s plays include On the March to the Sea (1961,) Weekend (1968,) and An Evening with Richard Nixon and… (1972.) His memoirs are Palimpsest (1995) and Point to Point Navigation (2006.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Gore Vidal
It makes no difference whom you vote for—the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Voting
Great critics do not explicate a text; they describe it and then report on what they have described, if the description itself is not the criticism.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Criticism
A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is an ability to articulate human relationships.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Theater
All the other candidates are making speeches about how much they have done for their country, which is ridiculous. I haven’t done anything yet, and I think it’s just common sense to send me to Washington and make me do my share.
—Gore Vidal
It is difficult to find a reputable American historian who will acknowledge the crude fact that a Franklin Roosevelt, say, wanted to be President merely to wield power, to be famed and to be feared. To learn this simple fact one must wade through a sea of
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Power
The last best hope of earth, two trillion dollars in debt, is spinning out of control, and all we can do is stare at a flickering cathode-ray tube as Ollie “answers” questions on TV while the press, resolutely irrelevant as ever, asks politicians if they have committed adultery. From V-J Day 1945 to this has been, my fellow countrymen, a perfect nightmare.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Twentieth Century
Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps twenty players, and Tennessee Williams has about five, and Samuel Beckett one – and maybe a clone of that one. I have ten or so, and that’s a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Authors & Writing
Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they’re both just aspirin.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Democracy
All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Twentieth Century
Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.
—Gore Vidal
The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western World. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity—much less dissent.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Media
Never have children, only grand children.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Children
I find in most novels no imagination at all. They seem to think the highest form of the novel is to write about marriage, because that’s the most important thing there is for middle-class people.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Fiction, Authors & Writing
I’m all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Punishment
A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Appearance, Vanity
What is a long life but a nightmare of endless repetition?
—Gore Vidal
Major Barkinson had a sure method of foretelling weather, or anything else for that matter. He would, for instance, select a certain patch of sky and then count slowly to three; if, during that time, no sea gull crossed the patch of sky, the thing he wanted would come true
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Weather
Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Writing, Writers, Authors & Writing
Today’s public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can’t read them either.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Speech
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.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Theater
It is not enough to succeed, others must fail.
—Gore Vidal
Religions sprang up among men to deal with the sometimes terrifying aspects of existence, to make sense out of the senseless, to explain things we find inexplicable
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Religion
Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Democracy
The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Wealth, Money
On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: America
When Ronald Reagan’s career in show business came to an end, he was hired to impersonate, first, a California governor and then an American president who would reduce taxes for his employers, the Southern and Western New Rich, much of whose money came from the defence industries. There is nothing unusual about this arrangement. All recent presidents have had their price-tags.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Presidency
Of course, it is possible for any citizen with time to spare, and a canny eye, to work out what is actually going on, but for the many there is not time, and the network news is the only news even though it may not be news at all but only a series of flashing fictions…
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Media
All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Children
There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo—or heterosexual acts. Most people are a mixture of impulses if not practices.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Sex
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Authors & Writing, Fiction
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