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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

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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
Mystery
Challenges
Alone
Truth
Tempted
Way
Possess
Always
Suppose
Think
Challenge
Thinking
Keys

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[Norman Mailer] is against masturbation, he's against homosexuality. He believes that murder is essentially sexual. I think he's rather an anthology of all the darkest American traits.
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Although the notion of one god may give comfort to those in need of a daddy, it reminds the rest of us that the totalitarian society is grounded upon the concept of God the father. One paternal god, one paternal leader. Authority is absolute.
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The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity - much less dissent.
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Everybody is bisexual, and that is a fact of human nature. Some people practice both, and some practice one thing, and some people practice another thing and that is the way human beings are.
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There are certain truths so true that they are practically unbelievable.
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a writer must always tell the truth (unless he's a journalist)
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The whole point to American journalism is what ought to be true is true.
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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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Since I ought to be arrogant, impressed with my social position, overwhelmed by my beauty, therefore I am. Actually I was never my own type so I completely missed my beauty all through my youth. I have no social position and I stay away from what is known as society as much as possible. But people like to re-invent you, according to cliché.
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I suspect that one of the reasons we create fiction is to make sex exciting.
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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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What is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose putting down of opinions as though they were facts, and the treating of facts as though they were opinions.
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I suppose my liking for Italy is partly atavism, my family are of the old Roman stock. They came from the Alps north of Venice.
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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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I said, well, it's a very primitive country, the United States, and it's full of superstitions, which come out of a very fundamental religious bias, which is primitive Christianity.
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A superficial education would be worse than none. But a full education would open every man's eyes to the nature of human existence.
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Ideally, the writer needs no audience other than the few who understand that it is immodest and greedy to want more.
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Poor John Simon - what a nightmare, to wake up in the morning and realize that you are John Simon.
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There are two things you never turn down: sex and appearing on television.
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Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
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