Quotes By Gore Vidal

Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.

Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.

On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.

There's a lot to be said for being nouveau riche, and the Reagans mean to say it all.

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

Litigation takes the place of sex at middle age.

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

Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.

Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an I.Q. of 60.

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.

Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they're both just aspirin.

By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over.

Never have children, only grandchildren.

The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.

In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are.

That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.

Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent.

The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.

Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.

Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.

As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days.

All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world.

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.

Now you have people in Washington who have no interest in the country at all. They're interested in their companies, their corporations grabbing Caspian oil.