Gore Vidal
FameRank: 6

"Gore Vidal" was an American writer (novels, essays, screenplays, stage plays) and a public intellectual known for his Patrician (ancient Rome)/patrician manner, epigrammatic wit, and polished style of writing. As Eugene Louis Vidal, he was born to a political family; his maternal grandfather was Thomas Pryor Gore, U.S. Senator for Oklahoma (1907–21 and 1931–37). As Gore Vidal, he was a Democratic Party (United States)/Democratic Party politician who twice sought elected office; first to the House of Representatives (New York State, 1960), then to the Senate (California, 1982).

If you enjoy these quotes, be sure to check out other famous novelists! More Gore Vidal on Wikipedia.

The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.

Trust a nitwit society like this one to think that there are only two categories - fag and straight.

There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo -- or heterosexual acts. Most people are a mixture of impulses if not practices.

Write something, even if it's just a suicide note.

Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say and not giving a damn.

Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.

It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true.

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.

Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself.

Whenever a friend succeeds a little something in me dies.

I might be President by now if it weren't for this 'queer' thing.

There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.

For certain people after 50, litigation takes the place of sex.

Never have children, only grandchildren.

Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel.

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon. I cannot understand the love affair.

I don't want prizes. I turned down the National Institute of Arts and Letters when I was elected to it in 1976 on the grounds that I already belonged to the Diner's Club.

Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either.

Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.

Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.

I'm a born-again atheist.