It's not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
Gore Vidal

Litigation takes the place of sex at middle age.
Gore Vidal

Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.
Gore Vidal

Never have children, only grandchildren.
Gore Vidal

Now you have people in Washington who have no interest in the country at all. They're interested in their companies, their corporations grabbing Caspian oil.
Gore Vidal

On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.
Gore Vidal

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

Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.
Gore Vidal

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.
Gore Vidal

Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
Gore Vidal

Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.
Gore Vidal

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

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

That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president.
Gore Vidal

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

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.
Gore Vidal

The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.
Gore Vidal

The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.
Gore Vidal

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.
Gore Vidal

The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.
Gore Vidal