Gore Vidal Quotes

The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.

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

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

A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.

It makes no difference who you vote for - the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people.

Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.

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

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

Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.

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

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

I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.

I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.

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.

In writing and politicking, it's best not to think about it, just do it.

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

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.

It's not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

Litigation takes the place of sex at middle age.

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

Never have children, only grandchildren.

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.

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

One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves.

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