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You can improve your talent, but your talent is a given, a mysterious constant. You must make it the best of its kind.

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
Kind
Make
Improve
Mysterious
Constant
Talent
Given
Best
Must

More quotes by Gore Vidal

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We have been at war almost constantly since the last century. And it has not helped our institutions. Congress no longer represents the people. The courts do not practice justice any more. The armies never stop playing at being the policemen of the world and of oil.
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I think we're going to have to accept the fact the U.S. is off the world map. We are not a great player any longer. And when we come home - as we will have to do because we've run out of money - we will discover that Argentine debts means Argentine politics. And on that note, you can wake up in the middle of the night.
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A huge number of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. You have a people that don't know anything about the rest of the world, and you have leaders who lie to them, lie to them, and lie to them.
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The hatred Americans have for their own government is pathological, if understandable. At one level it is simply thwarted greed: since our religion is making a buck, giving a part of that buck to any government is an act against nature.
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Christianity is such a silly religion.
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When anyone says to me, 'Can you keep a secret?' I say, 'Why should I, if you can't?'
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I'm in favor of sexual encounters.
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What is there to say, finally, except that pain is bad and pleasure good, life all, death nothing.
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Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head.
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I'm in Hollywood right now, surrounded by nothing but the sons and grandsons of movie stars.
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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.
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A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is ability to articulate human relationships.
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What is a political party but a conspiracy?
Gore Vidal
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As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
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Most lives are spent putting on and taking off masks.
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I have never been particularly impressed by the self centered musings of my fellow writers.
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If you want to rise in politics in the United States, there is one subject you must stay away from, and that is politics.
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To speak today of a famous novelist is like speaking of a famous cabinetmaker or speedboat designer. Adjective is inappropriate to noun.
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Precocious talents mature slowly if at all.
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Terrorism is a metaphor, it's an abstract noun. It's like having a war on dandruff. It's something from advertising, it's meaningless.
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