'The Turner Diaries' is a racist daydream by a former physics teacher writing under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald. — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
I don't think contemporary writers spend a lot of time reading each other. Particularly writers of the same nationality. — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
I write in different styles because I hear different voices in my head. It would be boring to have always the same… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
I have never been particularly impressed by the self centered musings of my fellow writers. — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith. — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
I came out of Capitol Hill. Well, that's just not an ordinary background for a writer of the ordinary American sort. — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
Class is the most difficult subject for American writers to deal with as it is the most difficult for the English to… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
I started to read my first book at about the age of six. I started to write a book simultaneously. Not to… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
I like the distance that Europe gives me. Also if I stayed in America I'd be a full-time politician and have no… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
What matters finally is not the world's judgment of oneself but one's own judgment of the world… Any writer who lacks this… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
I spend most of my time in California. I feel I am fueled by rage and by the political climate there. I… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
There was more of a flow to my output of writing in the past, certainly. Having no contemporaries left means you cannot… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
Writing when you are already very old means you have lived through the endings of so many things, you are more aware… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
These little books I write, such as The End of Freedom, about the post-9/11 political climate in the United States, sell in… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
I find in most novels no imagination at all. They seem to think the highest form of the novel is to write… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
The most interesting thing about writing is the way that it obliterates time. Three hours seem like three minutes. — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
Most writers write books that they wouldn't read. I ought to know; I've done it myself. — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
You hear all this whining going on, 'Where are our great writers?' The thing I might feel doleful about is: 'Where are… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
Sex was a great no-no for Americans, so that was obviously an attraction to the writers, and since sex is a great… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
If you are at the mercy of what they call print interviews and the mercy of people who write about you, they… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
Ideally, the writer needs no audience other than the few who understand that it is immodest and greedy to want more. — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
I’ve always said, ‘I have nothing to say, only to add.’ And it’s with each addition that the writing gets done. The… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
A writer represents his family history. My grandfather was a senator and my father served in the Roosevelt administration. In other words,… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
Writing of history is our only heuristic principle. The Germans have a word for it, einfühlen. It is the ability to experience… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party...and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit… — Gore Vidal Copy Share
Many people in the United States happen to believe that United States policy is wrong in Vietnam and the Vietcong are correct in wanting… — Gore Vidal Copy Share
“It is curious how little interested we are in the sexual desires of those who do not attract us.” — Gore Vidal Copy Share
This separation was absolute in our original Republic. But the sky-godders do not give up easily. In the 1950s they actually got the phrase… — Gore Vidal Copy Share
The oligarchs think that the people are both dangerous and stupid. Their point is moot. But we do know that the oligarchs are a… — Gore Vidal Copy Share
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying… — Gore Vidal Copy Share
Rome ... at its most decadent, had never thought of hiring an actor to go through the motions of being an emperor while the… — Gore Vidal Copy Share
History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true. — Gore Vidal Copy Share
The malady of civilized man is his knowledge of death. The good artist, like the wise man, addresses himself to life and invests with… — Gore Vidal Copy Share
Sex is a continuum. You go through different phases along life's way... and if you don't, you've been sort of cheated. — Gore Vidal Copy Share
All I want is that Americans still be able to read the alphabet in a hundred years. I am not very ambitious. — Gore Vidal Copy Share
I do not admire 'the people,' as such. No one really does. Their folk wisdom is usually false, their instincts predatory. Even their sense… — Gore Vidal Copy Share
“One of the problems of a society as tightly controlled as ours is that we get so little information about what those of our… — Gore Vidal Copy Share
