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Truman Capote has made lying an art. A minor art.

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
Lying
Art
Made
Capote
Truman
Minor
Minors

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Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.
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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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I spend most of my time in California. I feel I am fueled by rage and by the political climate there. I am angry most of the time when I am there, which might be unbearable for someone else, but for me it's fuel for my writing.
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As one gets older, litigation replaces sex.
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The word 'radical' derives from the Latin word for root. Therefore, if you want to get to the root of anything you must be radical. It is no accident that the word has now been totally demonized.
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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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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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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 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.
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Presidents have absolutely gone against the will of Congress. Congress hasn't declared a war since December 7, 1941, and yet we've been at war ever since with somebody or other in order to justify the war machine. Now we have alienated almost the entire earth
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I'm in favor of sexual encounters.
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France is a nation devoted to the false hypothesis on which it then builds marvelously logical structures.
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All Americans born between 1890 and 1945 wanted to be movie stars.
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A good deed never goes unpunished.
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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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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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We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.
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The family in the West is finished... its origin was economic, not biological... the odd group of strangers that make up every family no longer have any reason to live together, to suffer from one another's jagged edges.
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Obviously I'm in favor of protecting the rights of everybody: gay, black, women, what have you, American Indians.
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