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
writing mean past
There was more of a flow to my output of writing in the past, certainly. Having no contemporaries left means you cannot say, Well, so-and-so will like this, which you do when you're younger. You realize there is no so-and-so anymore. You are your own so-and-so. There is a bleak side to it.
book writing past
Writing of history is our only heuristic principle. The Germans have a word for it, einfühlen. It is the ability to experience the past in the present and to recreate it. In my books, I have tried to recreate it in the most natural way possible: History must be integrated into the story without the weight of premonition.
past gossip long
Everybody likes a bit of gossip to some point, as long as it's gossip with some point to it. That's why I like history. History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.
past gossip might
History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.
country past thinking
I think since Watergate people are interested in what the past of this country was really like.
happened impression rather settles
In character, as it were, the writer settles for an impression of what happened rather than creating the sense of the thing happening.
capital classical death hour offense speculate
In classical times, it was a capital offense to speculate upon the hour of a king's death or upon the identity of his successor.
ahead city pointed
That is New York. I pointed to the waterfront just ahead as if the city were mine.
based british colonial empire french maintained modern money paris power shifted three
After the French Revolution, the world money power shifted from Paris to London. For three generations, the British maintained an old-fashioned colonial empire, as well as a modern empire based on London's primacy in the money markets.
fervent foe hudson tap whether
I'm a fervent foe of water pollution, whether it is our own Hudson River or Philadelphia's tap water.
bodies national
In essence, Clinton's Anti-Terrorism Act would set up a national police force, over the long-dead bodies of the founders.
discovery manage obvious state
I like the way you always manage to state the obvious with a sense of real discovery.
american-novelist andy genius
Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an I.Q. of 60.
betrays night wedding
Each youth betrays considerable anxiety about the wedding night ahead.