Quote

Freud did some serious damage to American literature - a lot of writers began therapy in the 1940s, after which they all became terribly egocentric.

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
Began
Writers
Became
Serious
Egocentric
Literature
Freud
American
Terribly
Therapy
Damage

More quotes by Gore Vidal

Image
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.
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
You can improve your talent, but your talent is a given, a mysterious constant. You must make it the best of its kind.
Gore Vidal
Image
Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose. Any movement of a liberal nature endangers his authority and that of his delegates on earth. One God, one King, one Pope, one master in the factory, one father-leader in the family at home.
Gore Vidal
Image
By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over.
Gore Vidal
Image
I have no television to go on so I get a lot of writing done. That's my substitute for television.
Gore Vidal
Image
What is a political party but a conspiracy?
Gore Vidal
Image
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.
Gore Vidal
Image
In matters of faith, inconvenient evidence is always suppressed while contradictions go unnoticed.
Gore Vidal
Image
That peculiarly American religion, President-worship.
Gore Vidal
Image
Love, like a sense of humor, is now claimed by everyone even though Love, like a sense of humor, is rather more rare than not, and to most of us poor muddlers unbearable at full strength.
Gore Vidal
Image
I’m not a conspiracy theorist - I’m a conspiracy analyst.
Gore Vidal
Image
The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge.
Gore Vidal
Image
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.
Gore Vidal
Image
I'm in favor of any form of sexual relationship that gives pleasure to those involved. And I have never heard a convincing argument to the contrary.
Gore Vidal
Image
Sex was a great no-no for Americans, so that was obviously an attraction to the writers, and since sex is a great part of most people's lives, it's a great subject.
Gore Vidal
Image
Instead of finding alternative energy sources, we try to subjugate entire regions of the world. People do not understand that by doing this, the United States are going to absolute ruin.
Gore Vidal
Image
The word heterosexual is an adjective, the word homosexual is an adjective. They describe an activity. Of course there's a homosexual activity of course there's a heterosexual activity. But there's no homosexual person. There's no heterosexual person. Everybody is everything.
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
I might become an ascetic, live in India. A little rice is about the best I can do now.
Gore Vidal