Quotes by
Gore Vidal |
1925-2012 , American writer
American novelist, playwright, and essayist, noted for his irreverent and intellectually adroit novels. Also, known for his patrician manner, epigrammatic wit, and polished style of writing. | 26 quotes | 1,874 visits |
Quotations
| • | Write something, even if it's just a suicide note. 39 |
| • | By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over. 14 |
| • | Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn. 5 |
| • | Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an I.Q. of 60. 5 |
| • | A narcissist is someone better looking than you are. 4 |
| • | Never pass up a chance to have sex or appear on television. 4 |
| • | Modern Christianity is a encyclopaedia of traditional superstition. 4 |
| • | Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies. 4 |
| • | Half the American people never read a newspaper. Half never vote for President — the same half? 4 |
| • | Traitors who prevail are patriots; usurpers who succeed are divine emperors. 3 |
| • | Envy is the central fact of American life. 3 |
| • | It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail. 3 |
| • | 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. 3 |
| • | The unfed mind devours itself. 3 |
| • | Southerners make good novelists: they have so many stories because they have so much family. 3 |
| • | Everybody likes a bit of gossip to some point, as long as it’s gossip with some point to it. That’s why I like history. History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true. 2 |
| • | Nothing human is finally calculable; even to ourselves we are strange. 2 |
| • | I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon, but I cannot understand the love affair. 2 |
| • | The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country — and we haven't seen them since. 2 |
| • | At least when the Emperor Justinian, a sky-god man, decided to outlaw sodomy, he had to come up with a good practical reason, which he did. It is well known, Justinian declared, that buggery is a principal cause of earthquakes, and so must be prohibited. 2 |
| • | American society, literary or lay, tends to be humorless. What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke? 2 |
| • | Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel. 2 |
| • | On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died. 2 |
| • | There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise. 2 |
Funny Quotes
| • | The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so. 4 |
| • | I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults. 4 |
