There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.
- "Writing Plays for Television," New World Writing, #10, 1956.
I am an obsessive rewriter, doing one draft and then another and another, usually five. In a way, I have nothing to say, but a great deal to add.
- (Source attribution sought; contact gorevidalpages-at-gmail.com)
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
- The Sunday Times Magazine, Setember 16, 1973.
I don't want to be respectable. I don't want prizes. I turned down the National Institute of Arts and Letters when I was elected to it in 1976 on the grounds that I already belonged to the Diner's Club.
- (Source attribution sought; contact gorevidalpages-at-gmail.com)
I am at heart a propagandist, a tremendous hater, a tiresome nag.
- "Writing Plays for Television," New World Writing, #10, 1956.
I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon, but I cannot understand the love affair.
- quoted by Martin Amis, "Mr. Vidal: Unpatriotic Gore" (1977) in The Moronic Inferno (1987)
I wouldn't use the word aristocratic [to describe my background].... My family was ruling class through holding office (Senate, Cabinet) as well as providing generals and admirals for the various wars.... The Auchinclosses are regarded by the egregious Birminghams as aristocratic because they have had money or married money for the last three quarters of a century...and to the extent that I was Hugh D. Auchincloss's stepson from ten to sixteen, it can be said that I was brought up as an American aristocrat at Bailey's Beach, Newport; the Warrenton Hunt; 1925 F Street club, Washington D.C.; etc. But I like ruling class better . . . partly because that excludes almost all the Auchinclosses!
- 1979 interview in Views From a Window: Conversations with Gore Vidal (ed. Robert J. Stanton), 1980.
Don’t ever make the mistake with people like me thinking we are looking for heroes. There aren’t any and if there were, they would be killed immediately. I’m never surprised by bad behaviour. I expect it.
- The Times Online, September 30, 2009.
Lonely children often have imaginary playmates but I was never lonely; rather, I was solitary, and wanted no company at all other than books and movies, and my own imagination.
- Screening History, 1992.
I was never an expatriate. I was never considered to be that by anyone except for the far right. I had a house in southern Italy and another house in southern California--but in right-wing circles, that's enough to be considered an expat. America was what I always wrote about.
- "An American Icon: Gore Vidal on Italy, Iraq - and Why He Hates George Bush," by Peter Popham. The Independent, June 23rd, 2006.
I’m not sentimental about anything. Life flows by, and you flow with it or you don’t. Move on and move out.
- "For Gore Vidal, A Last, Long Look From the Heights," Joseph Giovannini. The New York Times, August 26, 2004.
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