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| Gore Vidal |
Today
is the birthday of an American writer Eugene Luther
Gore Vidal (born as Eugene Louis Vidal, October 3, 1925 – July 31,
2012), known for his essays, novels, screenplays, and Broadway plays. He was
also known for his patrician manner, Transatlantic accent, and witty aphorisms.
His most widely regarded social novel was Myra Breckinridge; his best known
historical novels included Julian, Burr, and Lincoln. His third novel, The City
and the Pillar (1948), outraged conservative critics as one of the first major
American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality. Vidal always rejected the
terms of "homosexual" and "heterosexual" as inherently
false, claiming that the vast majority of individuals had the potential to be
pansexual. His screenwriting credits included the epic historical drama Ben-Hur
(1959), into which he claimed he had written a "gay subplot." Ben-Hur
won the Academy Award for Best Picture. At the time of his death he was the
last of a generation of American writers who had served during World War II,
including J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer, and Joseph Heller.
Perhaps best remembered for his caustic wit, he referred to himself as a
"gentleman bitch" and has been described as the 20th century's answer
to Oscar Wilde. Presenting some Quotations : Being
Poet
- A triumph of the embalmer's art.
- It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
- A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
- Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
- Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
- Never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.
- All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world.
- There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.
- I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
- Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
- A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is an ability to articulate human relationships.
- Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they're both just aspirin.
- Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are.
- without which literature cannot be made.
- It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true.
- To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours, imitating kindly trees, as they watch for birds.
- Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
- The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.
- 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.
- On September 16, 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.
- As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days.
- 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.
- 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.
- If most men and women were forced to rely upon physical charm to attract lovers, their sexual lives would be not only meager but in a youth-worshiping country like America painfully brief.
- 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.
- Now the long-feared Asiatic colossus takes its turn as world leader, and we—the white race—have become the yellow man's burden. Let us hope that he will treat us more kindly than we treated him.
