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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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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
Ought
Books
Read
Write
Book
Done
Writing
Writers
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More quotes by Gore Vidal

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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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When you control opinion, as corporate America controls opinion in the United States by owning the media, you can make the masses believe almost anything you want, and guide them as you please.
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Writing of history is our only heuristic principle. The Germans have a word for it, einfühlen. It is the ability to experience the past in the present and to recreate it. In my books, I have tried to recreate it in the most natural way possible: History must be integrated into the story without the weight of premonition.
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If you're a critic of the rulers of the United States, you are either demonized, or you are trivialized by the press, and they do a very good job of making you into a non-person or a ridiculous person.
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Never offend an enemy in a small way.
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What other culture could have produced someone like Hemmingway and not seen the joke?
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Since nothing is free, to each his price.
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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.
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My father had a deep and lifelong contempt for politicians in general (They tell lies, he used to say with wonder, even when they don't have to).
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If satire is to be effective, the audience must be aware of the thing satirized.
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Everybody likes a bit of gossip to some point, as long as it's gossip with some point to it. That's why I like history. History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.
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All I want is that Americans still be able to read the alphabet in a hundred years. I am not very ambitious.
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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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To bring into the world an unwanted human being is as antisocial an act as murder.
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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.
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For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.
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Where there is no desire or pursuits, there is no wholeness. But there are satisfying lesser states, fragments.
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Half the American population no longer reads newspapers: plainly, they are the clever half.
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Precocious talents mature slowly if at all.
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You know, I've been around the ruling class all my life, and I've been quite aware of their total contempt for the people of the country.
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