Eugene Luther Gore Vidal, 1925 - 2012
Born: 3 October 1925, West Point, New York
Died: 31 July 2012, Hollywood Hills, California
Vidal was born in the Cadet Hospital of the military academy at West Point, his father was the first aeronautics instructor there. His father co-founded three airlines; the Ludington Line which eventually became part of Eastern, Transcontinental Air Transport which became TWA, and, with Amelia Earhart, Northeast Airlines. Vidal's parents divorced when he was ten and he lived with his mother at Washington City, attending Sidwell Friends School and St Alban's School. His maternal grandfather, Thomas P. Gore (whose name Vidal would later assume) was a senator from Oklahoma. Senator Gore was blind, so young Vidal often read aloud for him and sometimes acted as a guide, giving him early exposure to the workings of power. Although he was involved with women from time to time, his primary partnership was with Howard Austen from 1950 until Austen's death in 2003. His fiction often scandalized conservative audiences, his Rocking the Boat (1963) was the first American novel to deal frankly with homosexual characters. He wrote several historical novels (Burr, 1876, and Julian are examples from the Quotemaster's library), worked on numerous screenplays (including Ben Hur), and many essays and magazine pieces. His politics were consistently liberal, if not always predictable, and his attitude to sex was that it was a good thing and your neighbor's sex life was not your affair. Although I can't say that I agree with everything he's written, his skill as a wordsmith is such that I've enjoyed reading everything of his that I've read. He died at home from complications of pneumonia at age 86.
Biography from Wikipedia and The American Conservative
Additional quotes from Wikiquote. Wikiquote entries are often "sourced" and may include items longer than those included here, particularly for poets, lyricists, and dramatists.
Gore Vidal quotes:
Quotes found : 103 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 7) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next
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- A genius with the IQ of a moron. permalink
Gore Vidal - on Andy Warhol - A narcissist is someone better looking than you are. permalink
Gore Vidal - A superficial education would be worse than none. But a full education would open every man's eyes to the nature of human existence. permalink
Gore Vidal - Actually, there is no such thing as a homosexual person, any more than there is such a thing as a heterosexual person. The words are adjectives describing sexual acts, not people. The sexual acts are entirely normal; if they were not, no one would perform them. permalink
Gore Vidal - "Sex Is Politics" (1979) - All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself. permalink
Gore Vidal - An educated man must be bilingual. permalink
Gore Vidal - Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so. permalink
Gore Vidal - Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates. permalink
Gore Vidal - "Gods and Greens" (1989) - As Brooks Adams put it, the sole problem of our ruling class is whether to coerce or to bribe the powerless majority. permalink
Gore Vidal - The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (1992) - As one gets older, litigation replaces sex. permalink
Gore Vidal - As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests. permalink
Gore Vidal - The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (1992) - At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice. permalink
Gore Vidal - "Sex and the Law" in Partisan Review (Summer 1965) - Before the cards that one is dealt by life are the cards that fate has dealt: one's family. permalink
Gore Vidal - Big oil, big steel, big agriculture avoid the open marketplace. Big corporations fix prices among themselves and thus drive out of business the small entrepreneur. Also, in their conglomerate form, the huge corporations have begun to challenge the very legitimacy of the state. permalink
Gore Vidal - "The State of the Union" (1978) - By and large, serious fiction was the work of victims who portrayed victims for an audience of victims who, it was oddly assumed, would want to see their lives realistically portrayed. permalink
Gore Vidal - Screening History (1992)
Quotes found : 103 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 7) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next
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