Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidalwas an American writerand a public intellectual known for his patrician manner, epigrammatic wit, and polished style of writing...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth3 October 1925
CityWest Point, NY
CountryUnited States of America
stupid thinking people
The oligarchs think that the people are both dangerous and stupid. Their point is moot. But we do know that the oligarchs are a good deal more dangerous to the polity than the people at large.
memories father mean
I would be literally patrician in the sense that the senators in ancient Rome were called conscript fathers, paters, from which comes the word patrician. So if you come from a senatorial family, you are literally patrician in that sense, but that doesn't mean that you couldn't be Billy Carter, you know, of recent memory.
purpose hawthorne united-states
The United States is my subject, but as Hawthorne once wrote, "the United States are suited for many admirable purposes, but not to live in."
italian paris generations
The best novelist of my generation is an Italian living in Paris, still working and improving - Italo Calvino.
venice alps my-family
I suppose my liking for Italy is partly atavism, my family are of the old Roman stock. They came from the Alps north of Venice.
book writing age
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.
father magazines time-magazine
I have been on the cover of Time magazine. My father was on the cover of Time, and my grandfather was on the cover of Time.
journalism being-true whole
The whole point to American journalism is what ought to be true is true.
laughter men squares
In the town of Ravella, where I have a house, when the Supreme Court said that an act of sodomy, as they describe it, could not be committed between a man and his wife, the entire square burst into laughter.
father class people
When you come from a family that has been political, and I was brought up by my grandfather in the Senate, my father was in Roosevelt's Cabinet, this is not the class that produces writers or reflective people.
war stupid fighting
We were to be forever at war with somebody. We were going to fight communism everywhere on earth even if it didn't threaten us. It was a holy war, just as we've made one on terrorism and Islam, equally stupid and equally irrelevant.
years ambitious want
All I want is that Americans still be able to read the alphabet in a hundred years. I am not very ambitious.
done united-states savages
I am savage about what has been done to the United States by its rulers.
arrogant overwhelmed journalism
The whole point to American journalism is what ought to be true is true. Since I ought to be arrogant, impressed with my social position, overwhelmed by my beauty, therefore I am.