117 quotes
"If you don't worship me you will burn forever." I always thought that was ugly.
There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.
Preface to Reflections Upon a Sinking Ship (1969)
Altruism is a brief phase through which some adolescents must pass. It is rather like acne. Happily, as with acne, only a few are permanently scarred.
Lonely children often have imaginary playmates but I was never lonely; rather, I was solitary, and wanted no company at all other than books and movies, and my own imagination.
Screening History (1992)
First coffee, then a bowel movement. Then the Muse joins me.
To write a script today means working for a committee of people who know nothing about movies, as opposed, say, to real estate or the higher art of bookkeeping.
I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon, but I cannot understand the love affair.
...for ferocity there is nothing on Earth equal a Christian bishop hunting "heresy", as they call any opinion contrary to their own.
Julian (1964)
My father had a deep and lifelong contempt for politicians in general ("They tell lies," he used to say with wonder, "even when they don't have to").
At Home (1988)
...because academics everywhere are forever attacking one another, and I had long since learned that one must never believe what a teacher says of another.
Julian (1964)
A current pejorative adjective is narcissistic. Generally, a narcissist is anyone better looking than you are, but lately the adjective is often applied to those “liberals” who prefer to improve the lives of others rather than exploit them.
We should stop going around babbling about how we're the greatest democracy on earth, when we're not even a democracy. We are a sort of militarised republic.
Every four years the naive half who vote are encouraged to believe that if we can elect a really nice man or woman President everything will be all right. But it won't be.
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (1992)
Islam, Judaism, Christianity are the three great evils that have befallen the world.
Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia (2013)
I have begun writing what I have said I'd never write, a memoir ("I am not my own subject," I used to say with icy superiority).
The City and the Pillar and Seven Early Stories (1995)
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.
Yo, peep. This me name be Gore Vidal. I is spitting rhymes about early history. Why homies give props to Uzis, not books? Ain't nothing but a mystery, aight.
Don't ever make the mistake with people like me thinking we are looking for heroes. There aren't any and if there were, they would be killed immediately. I'm never surprised by bad behaviour. I expect it.
Apparently, a concern for others is self-love at its least attractive, while greed is now a sign of the higher altruism. But then to reverse, periodically, the meanings of words is a very small price to pay for the freedom not only to conform but to consume.
Screening History (1992)
You hear all this whining going on, "Where are our great writers?" The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?
What I've Learned (2008)