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" What the police in their ignorance have not figured out is that they have lost all credibility since World War II. They are sort of parasites on the fringe of society and do no particular good for anyone except possibly themselves. "

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" You hear all this whining going on, 'Where are our great writers?' The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers? "

Gore Vidal

Hear

Great

Where

" I don't know how prisoners of war are ever heroes unless they escape. "

" The only thing that I react really violently to is being misquoted. "

" There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo- or heterosexual acts. Most people are a mixture of impulses if not practices. "

" I am only at home in the present. "

Gore Vidal

Present

Only

" To get people to do needed things is the perennial hard task of government, not to mention of religion and philosophy. "

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

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

" I know a lot of the Annapolis breed. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I am not, at heart, a playwright. "

Gore Vidal

Playwright

Heart

" Didn't George Washington say, 'He who controls Afghanistan will carry New Jersey?' "

" I never said I was gay, because I don't think anyone is. "

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

" I didn't mean to spend my life writing American history, which should have been taught in the schools, but I saw no alternative but to taking it on myself. I could think of a lot of cheerier things I'd rather be doing than analyzing George Washington and Aaron Burr. But it came to pass, that was my job, so I did it. "

" Policemen are seldom tried for their crimes, or indeed, held responsible for what they do, which disturbs the peace and causes distress among the orderly. "

" The Pentagon talks about our power to 'overkill' Russia ten times, twenty times, perhaps forty-eight times. For my tax money, it is sufficient to overkill them once. "

" I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults. "

" I am a novelist turned temporary adventurer, and I chose to write television, movies and plays for much the same reason that Henry Morgan selected the Spanish Main for his peculiar - and not dissimilar - sphere of operations. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

Gore Vidal

Less

American

" Most of our writers tend to be recorders. "

" I never wanted to be a writer. I mean, that's the last thing I wanted. "

" The individual's desire to dominate his environment is not a desirable trait in a society which every day grows more and more confining. "

" The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country - and we haven't seen them since. "

" By the end of World War II, we were the most powerful and least damaged of the great nations. We also had most of the money. America's hegemony lasted exactly five years. "

" The media can't get anything straight. "