We have a great deal to learn from Scandinavia and a great deal to be alarmed at from the Mediterranean. Gore Vidal More Quotes by Gore Vidal More Quotes From Gore Vidal Novels, except as aids to masturbation, play no part in contemporary life. Gore Vidal masturbation play fiction I find in most novels no imagination at all. They seem to think the highest form of the novel is to write about marriage, because that's the most important thing there is for middle-class people. Gore Vidal writing class thinking As one gets older, litigation replaces sex. Gore Vidal sex I have begun writing what I have said I'd never write, a memoir ("I am not my own subject," I used to say with icy superiority). Gore Vidal icy used writing Many human beings enjoy sexual relations with their own sex; many don't; many respond to both. This plurality is part of our nature and not worth fretting about. Gore Vidal enjoy relation sex Once people get hung up on theology, they've lost sanity forever. More people have been killed in the name of Jesus Christ than any other name in the history of the world. Gore Vidal names people jesus I Must warn you, Iris, that I'm not a believer. And though I'm sure that the revelations of other men must be a source of infinite satisfaction to them, individually, I shouldn't for one second be so presumptuous as to make a choice among the many thousands of recorded revelations of truth, accepting one at the expense of all the others: I might so easily choose wrong and get into eternal trouble. And you must admit that the selection is wide, and dangerous to the amateur. Gore Vidal atheism choices men Commercialism is doing well that which should not be done at all. Gore Vidal useless-stuff time-management business 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. Gore Vidal hero mistake thinking This separation was absolute in our original Republic. But the sky-godders do not give up easily. In the 1950s they actually got the phrase In God We Trust onto the currency, in direct violation of the First Amendment. Gore Vidal giving-up sky religion The ideal to which John Adams subscribed-that we would be a nation of laws, not of men-was quickly subverted when the churches forced upon everyone, through supposedly neutral and just laws, their innumerable taboos on sex, alcohol, gambling. We are now indeed a nation of laws, mostly bad and certainly antihuman. Gore Vidal gambling men sex The worst that can be said about pornography is that it leads not to anti-social acts but to the reading of more pornography Gore Vidal reading social said Miss Rand now tells us that what we have thought was right is really wrong. The lesson should have read: One for one and none for all. Gore Vidal lessons should-have missing Of course his dust would be absorbed in other living things and to that degree at least he would exist again, though it was plain enough that the specific combination which was he would never exist again. Gore Vidal atheism dust atheist I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon, but I cannot understand the love affair. Gore Vidal dating love sex The family in the West is finished... its origin was economic, not biological... the odd group of strangers that make up every family no longer have any reason to live together, to suffer from one another's jagged edges. Gore Vidal family suffering together Always a godfather, never a god. Gore Vidal Every four years the naive half who vote are encouraged to believe that if we can elect a really nice man or woman President everything will be all right. But it won't be. Any individual who is able to raise $25 million to be considered presidential is not going to be much use to the people at large. He will represent oil, or aerospace, or banking, or whatever moneyed entities are paying for him. Certainly he will never represent the people of the country, and they know it. Hence, the sense of despair throughout the land as incomes fall, businesses fail and there is no redress. Gore Vidal nice country fall I’ve always said, ‘I have nothing to say, only to add.’ And it’s with each addition that the writing gets done. The first draft of anything is really just a track. Gore Vidal track writing add You can improve your talent, but your talent is a given, a mysterious constant. You must make it the best of its kind. Gore Vidal mysterious talent kind