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Between Malraux, Balzac, and Montaigne, I choose Montaigne. Montaigne will survive all the others, because the essay, meaning direct communication between the writer and his reader, will outlast the novel, by at least a thousand years.

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
Thousand
Survive
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Direct
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Balzac
Choose
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Essays

More quotes by Gore Vidal

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Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either.
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There's no such thing as a war against terrorism. It's idiotic. These are slogans. These are lies. It's advertising, which is the only art form we ever invented and developed.
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The worst thing to happen to Lincoln - aside from the unfortunate incident at Ford's theatre - was to fall into the hands of Carl Sandburg.
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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.
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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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You can only have a war with another country. You can't have a war with bad temper or a war against paranoids.
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Since no one can ever know for certain whether or not his own view of life is the correct one, it is absolutely impossible for him to know if someone else's is the wrong one.
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The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.
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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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On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.
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Apparently, 'conspiracy stuff' is now shorthand for unspeakable truth.
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Who gives a damn about being remembered? That's really for amateurs.
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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.
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I came out of Capitol Hill. Well, that's just not an ordinary background for a writer of the ordinary American sort.
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The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge.
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Age bothers everybody. I was never narcissistic about my looks, but people thought that I should be so therefore I was.
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By 1948, the Italians had begun to pull themselves together, demonstrating once more their astonishing ability to cope with disaster which is so perfectly balanced by their absolute inability to deal with success
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You hear all this whining going on, Where are our great writers? The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?
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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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Can you imagine having a love affair going on and on decade after decade? Macabre.
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