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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

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Gore Vidal
Age: 86 †
Born: 1925
Born: October 3
Died: 2012
Died: July 31
Actor
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Non-Fiction Writer
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Playwright
Politician
Prosaist
West Point
New York
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
Gor Vidal
Cameron Kay
Eugene Luther Vidal
Edgar Box
Katherine Everard
Eugene Vidal
Literature
Hygiene
Cannot
Stillness
Without
Active
Many
Writers
Made
Choose
Time
Lose
World
Loses
Virtue

More quotes by Gore Vidal

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There was more of a flow to my output of writing in the past, certainly. Having no contemporaries left means you cannot say, Well, so-and-so will like this, which you do when you're younger. You realize there is no so-and-so anymore. You are your own so-and-so. There is a bleak side to it.
Gore Vidal
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Baum (Writer of THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ) was a true educator, and those who read his Oz books are often made what they were not-imaginative , tolerant, alert to wonders, life.
Gore Vidal
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Most writers write books that they wouldn't read. I ought to know I've done it myself.
Gore Vidal
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I have been saying for the some time now that America has only one party - the property party. It's the party of big corporation, the party of money. It has two right wings one is Democrat and the other is Republican.
Gore Vidal
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I might become an ascetic, live in India. A little rice is about the best I can do now.
Gore Vidal
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Precocious talents mature slowly if at all.
Gore Vidal
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I suspect that one of the reasons we create fiction is to make sex exciting.
Gore Vidal
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[Norman Mailer] is against masturbation, he's against homosexuality. He believes that murder is essentially sexual. I think he's rather an anthology of all the darkest American traits.
Gore Vidal
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You see we adults have learned how to disguise our terrible characters but a child... well, it's like a grotesque drawing of us. They should be neither seen nor heard. And no one must make another one.
Gore Vidal
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These people [Bush Administration] are for the most part rip-off artists. Notice that they're all gas and oil men from Cheney, to the two Bushes I think Rumsfeld also.
Gore Vidal
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The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
Gore Vidal
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All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world.
Gore Vidal
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...you will do more harm than good by attempting to supplant old dogmas and customs with new dogmas. It will be the same in the end except that the old is less militant, less dangerous than a new order imposed by enthusiasts.
Gore Vidal
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Who gives a damn about being remembered? That's really for amateurs.
Gore Vidal
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To a born-again atheist like myself, it is clear that each of us has multiple selves, talents, perceptions. But to the Roman Catholic, unity is all.
Gore Vidal
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Class is the most difficult subject for American writers to deal with as it is the most difficult for the English to avoid.
Gore Vidal
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I don't seem to be cynical to myself but how what I say goes down with others is their problem. I'm realistic.
Gore Vidal
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That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president.
Gore Vidal
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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
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There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.
Gore Vidal