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The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge.

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
Like
Sponge
Sponges
Oysters
Learns
Writer
Nothing
Real
Life
Oyster

More quotes by Gore Vidal

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Liberal comes from the Latin liberalis, which means pertaining to a free man. In politics, to be liberal is to want to extend democracy through change and reform. One can see why that word had to be erased from our political lexicon.
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Since nothing is free, to each his price.
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There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.
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Sex is a continuum. You go through different phases along life's way... and if you don't, you've been sort of cheated.
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Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
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USA is suffering between imperialists and anti-imperialists. That is the situation. The most powerful country in the world is on its way back to the Stone Age.
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I'm a true reactionary. Like all patricians, I'd like to restore the original republic, which we lost 40 years ago when Harry Truman imposed the national security state on us, which has kept us at war, hot or cold, for almost half a century, and it's got us $4 trillion into debt.
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Apparently, 'conspiracy stuff' is now shorthand for unspeakable truth.
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The only absolute attainment is absolute abandonment.
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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.
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Most writers write books that they wouldn't read. I ought to know I've done it myself.
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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.
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It is reasonable to assume that, by and large, what is not read now will not be read, ever. It is also reasonable to assume that practically nothing that is read now will be read later.
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People like to re-invent you, according to cliché. There are a lot of stores about me that really apply only to Capote or Mailer or somebody else. Everything is a mish mash.
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Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge. What he takes in he takes in normally the way any person takes in experience. But it is what is done with it in his mind, if he is a real writer, that makes his art.
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The Puritans left England for America not because they couldn't be Puritans in their mother country, but because they were not allowed to force others to become Puritans in the New World, of course, they could and did.
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Many people in the United States happen to believe that United States policy is wrong in Vietnam and the Vietcong are correct in wanting to organize their country in their own way politically. This happens to be pretty much the opinion of western Europe and the other parts of the world.
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American laws don't work, but at least the laws of physics might work.
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I don't think contemporary writers spend a lot of time reading each other. Particularly writers of the same nationality.
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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.
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