Gore Vidal

I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.

Fifty percent of people won't vote and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent.

Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels, and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself.

Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they're both just aspirin.

Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically by definition be disqualified from ever doing so.

Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.

There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.

Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel.

All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.

There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.

Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies or the virus dies or both die.

In writing and politicking it's best not to think about it just do it.

The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity - much less dissent.

A good deed never goes unpunished.

One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves.

That is sad, until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.

What other culture could have produced someone like Hemmingway and not seen the joke?

Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an I.Q. of 60.

The greatest pleasure when I started making money was not buying cars or yachts but finding myself able to have as many freshly typed drafts as possible.

The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.