The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.
Gore Vidal

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

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.
Gore Vidal

There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.
Gore Vidal

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

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.
Gore Vidal

To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours, imitating kindly trees, as they watch for birds.
Gore Vidal

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.
Gore Vidal

Until the rise of American advertising, it never occurred to anyone anywhere in the world that the teenager was a captive in a hostile world of adults.
Gore Vidal

We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
Gore Vidal

We're not a democracy.
Gore Vidal

What is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose putting down of opinions as though they were facts, and the treating of facts as though they were opinions.
Gore Vidal

What other culture could have produced someone like Hemmingway and not seen the joke?
Gore Vidal

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

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

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