Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Others
Direct
Years
Meaning
Montaigne
Reader
Balzac
Choose
Outlast
Writer
Essay
Novel
Essays
Thousand
Survive
Least
Communication

More quotes by Gore Vidal

Image
Now the long-feared Asiatic colossus takes its turn as world leader, and we--the white race--have become the yellow man's burden.Let us hope that he will treat us more kindly than we treated him.
Gore Vidal
Image
As one gets older, litigation replaces sex.
Gore Vidal
Image
You can only have a war with another country. You can't have a war with bad temper or a war against paranoids.
Gore Vidal
Image
It is not enough merely to win others must lose.
Gore Vidal
Image
I suppose that one is always tempted to challenge those who think that they and they alone possess the truth or the way or the key to the mystery.
Gore Vidal
Image
I started to read my first book at about the age of six. I started to write a book simultaneously. Not to compete, just to augment. And that's how one starts. Or I started.
Gore Vidal
Image
It is notable how little empathy is cultivated or valued in our society. I put this down to our traditional racism and obsessive sectarianism. Even so, one would think that we would be encouraged to project ourselves into the character of someone of a different race or class, if only to be able to control him. But no effort is made.
Gore Vidal
Image
Apparently, 'conspiracy stuff' is now shorthand for unspeakable truth.
Gore Vidal
Image
...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
Image
Of course, it is possible for any citizen with time to spare, and a canny eye, to work out what is actually going on, but for the many there is not time, and the network news is the only news even though it may not be news at all but only a series of flashing fictions.
Gore Vidal
Image
Half the American population no longer reads newspapers: plainly, they are the clever half.
Gore Vidal
Image
What begins with comedy ends with comedy... in my short view of the matter.
Gore Vidal
Image
I’m not sentimental about anything. Life flows by, and you flow with it or you don’t. Move on and move out.
Gore Vidal
Image
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.
Gore Vidal
Image
Everything's wrong on Wikipedia.
Gore Vidal
Image
By and large, serious fiction was the work of victims who portrayed victims for an audience of victims who, it was oddly assumed, would want to see their lives realistically portrayed.
Gore Vidal
Image
It is astonishing to think that millions of people in my time—now, too, I suppose—actually thought that at a given moment in history two human beings had evolved to a higher state than that of all the gods that ever were or ever will be. This is titanism, as the Greeks would say. This is madness.
Gore Vidal
Image
A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is ability to articulate human relationships.
Gore Vidal
Image
In fact, life itself is a contradiction if only because birth is the direct cause, in every single case, of death
Gore Vidal
Image
As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days.
Gore Vidal