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Quote by Gore Vidal

“I am a born novelist, which does not happen all that often. There are people who try to write for a certain time, then they become Ministers of Culture under de Gaulle, and they begin living their own fictions.”

Quote by Gore Vidal

Author

American writer, playwright, screenwriter, and critic. Known for his sharp political satire and profound historical insight, Vidal's work spans a variety of genres including novels, plays, screenplays, and criticism. more

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“Between Malraux, Balzac, and Montaigne, I choose Montaigne. Montaigne will survive all the others, because the essay, meaning direct communication between the writer and his reader, will outlast the novel, by at least a thousand years.”

Years Novel Communication Reader Thousand Direct Thousand Years Essays Balzac Direct Communication

Author:Gore Vidal

“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.”

Way Writing Book Stories Past Natural Ability Principles Weight Integrated Premonition Heuristics

Author:Gore Vidal

“The world came so close to self-destruction during my lifetime. I was serving in the American Army, in the Pacific, at the time they bombed Hiroshima and then Nagasaki, and I felt there something like a foretaste of the end of the world.”

World Ends Self Felt Destruction Army Lifetime Serving End Of The World Pacific Self Destruction Hiroshima American Army

Author:Gore Vidal

“Memory is strange. Scientifically, it is not a mechanical means of repeating something. I can think a thousand times about when I broke my leg at the age of ten, but it is never the same thing which comes to mind when I think about it. My memory of this event has never been, in reality, anything except the memory of my last memory of that event. This is why I use the image of a palimpsest - something written over something partially erased - that is what memory is for me. It's not a film you play back in exactly the same way. It's like theater, with characters who appear from time to time.”

Thinking Way Mind Mean I Can Play Character Use Reality Age Lasts Film Memories Written Events Strange Thousand Ten Theater Legs Broke Palimpsest

Author:Gore Vidal

“Writing when you are already very old means you have lived through the endings of so many things, you are more aware of the shape life takes. You begin to know Death, you've been close to it. But youth can barely imagine the end of this journey.”

Knows Writing Mean Ends Imagine Journey Youth Shapes

Author:Gore Vidal

“We have been at war almost constantly since the last century. And it has not helped our institutions. Congress no longer represents the people. The courts do not practice justice any more. The armies never stop playing at being the policemen of the world and of oil.”

People World Has Beens War Lasts Justice Practice Century Army Institutions Court Congress Oil Policemen

Author:Gore Vidal

“All I want is that Americans still be able to read the alphabet in a hundred years. I am not very ambitious.”

Want Years Stills Able Hundred Ambitious Alphabet

Author:Gore Vidal

“The Americans are clever. They thoroughly understand things that have to do with money, war, death, sickness. And there is also a real tradition of skepticism in this country.”

War Real Country Tradition Clever Sickness Skepticism

Author:Gore Vidal

“I am glad my life is coming to an end. To think that it might last another five hundred years, now that would be terrible, in my case.”

Thinking Years Ends Might Would Be Lasts Life Is Cases Five Terrible Hundred Glad Coming To An End

Author:Gore Vidal

“So many people operate in a world of right and wrong [that] they become polarized. You're conservative or you're liberal; and if you're one or the other, you can't be both. I just think that this idea of right and wrong is kind of a damaging idea.”

People Ifs Thinking World Kind Ideas Conservative

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