"American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither."
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Gore Vidal quotes (page 14 of 23)
457 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The most interesting thing about writing is the way that it obliterates time. Three hours seem like three minutes. Then there is the business of surprise. I never know what is coming next. The phrase that sounds in the head changes when it appears on the page. Then I start probing it with a pen, finding new meanings. Sometimes I burst out laughing at what is happening as I twist and turn sentences. Strange business, all in all. One never gets to the end of it. That’s why I go on, I suppose. To see what the next sentences I write will be."
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"If Henry Miller often sounded like a village idiot, it is because, like Whitman, he was the rest of the village as well."
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"I have been asked whether I wish to nominate a successor, an inheritor, a dauphin or delfino. I have decided to name Christopher Hitchens."
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"I’ve always said, ‘I have nothing to say, only to add.’ And it’s with each addition that the writing gets done. The first draft of anything is really just a track."
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"What matters finally is not the world's judgment of oneself but one's own judgment of the world.... Any writer who lacks this final arrogance will not survive very long in America."
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"Envy is the central fact of American life."
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"It used to be the custom in this country that when you had made a career and were mature in judgment, you went to the Senate to give something back t the Republic. The idea that at age 25 you go out and buy a blow dryer and starting running for office is not what the founders had in mind"
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"The true confessors have been aware that not only is life mostly failure, but that in one's failure or pettiness or wrongness exists the living drama of the self."
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"The critics are like tourists who return from a trip saying they've "done" Machu Picchu: "Okay, we've done magical realism," so now we can throw it out."
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"Do nothing that is not natural - and ritual is natural - and all will be for the best."
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"Class is the most difficult subject for American writers to deal with as it is the most difficult for the English to avoid."
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"Some of my father's fellow West Pointers once asked him why I turned out so well, his secret in raising me. And he said, "I never gave him any advice, and he never asked for any." We agreed on nothing, but we never quarreled once."
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"They are longing for a war with Iran. Iran is no more a harm to us than was Iraq or Afghanistan. They invented an enemy, they tell lies, lies, lies. The New York Times goes along with their lies, lies, lies. And they don't stop. When the public that's lied to 30 times a day it's apt to believe the lies, is not it?"
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"Who gives a damn about being remembered? That's really for amateurs."
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"The fool is often oblivious of his own gaucherie."
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"Religions sprang up among men to deal with the sometimes terrifying aspects of existence, to make sense out of the senseless, to explain things we find inexplicable."
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"As Brooks Adams put it, the sole problem of our ruling class is whether to coerce or to bribe the powerless majority."
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"In almost every case (where the United States has fought wars) our overwhelming commitment to freedom, democracy and human rights has required us to support those regimes that would deny freedom, democracy and human rights to their own people."
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"Religions are manipulated in order to serve those who govern society and not the other way around."
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