Gore Vidal

“Why not just eliminate the federal income tax?”

“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.”

“I sometimes think it is because they are so bad at expressing themselves verbally that writers take to pen and paper in the first place.”

“I cannot remember when I was not fascinated by Henry Adams.”

“I'm a fervent foe of water pollution, whether it is our own Hudson River or Philadelphia's tap water.”

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

“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.”

“I can't name three first-rate literary critics in the United States. I'm told there are a few hidden away at universities, but they don't print them in 'The New York Times.'”

“Overcrowding in the cities is producing a collective madness in which irrational violence flourishes because man needs more space in which to be than the modern city allows.”

“In essence, Clinton's Anti-Terrorism Act would set up a national police force, over the long-dead bodies of the founders.”

“There is a terrible garrulousness in most American writing, legacy of the old Frontier.”

“I was raised in the Washington household of my grandfather Senator Thomas P. Gore of Oklahoma, and have known politicians intimately all my life.”

“History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.”

“Gossip is conversation about people.”

“Never have children, only grandchildren.”

“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.”

“To prevent the theft of 'Ben-Hur's sets, guards were prowling the back lot long after production had been shut down.”

“The truth about Pearl Harbour is obscured to this day. But it has been much studied.”

“What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke?”

“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.”