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
critics few literary print united york
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.'
new-york self-confidence cities
[ New York ] is a place that worships incompetence particularly if it's combined with energy and paranoid self-confidence. Only in a city like New York could Truman Capote have made it, or John Simon.
new-york war lying
They are longing for a war with Iran. Iran is no more a harm to us than was Iraq or Afghanistan. They invented an enemy, they tell lies, lies, lies. The New York Times goes along with their lies, lies, lies. And they don't stop. When the public that's lied to 30 times a day it's apt to believe the lies, is not it?
new-york writing worst
The New York Times is the worst in that hardly anybody can write English over there. Most of it reads like slight translations from the German.
country new-york real
It was a pity that movies and live TV left New York for Hollywood. London theater, movies, television - until (Britain's) money ran out - were always better than ours since the city was the political capital of the country, as well as the artistic and literary one. In L.A. we've always been slightly sealed off from real life. It's no accident that two of our most interesting directors, Woody Allen and Bob Altman, are more or less settled in the real world.
new-york people enemy
I was the first - I was extremely unpopular with the establishment of the United States, particularly the New York Times was always an enemy, and Time magazine, off and on, the enemy, because I said things and took positions that other people didn't do.
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.