Foreigners are mystified by the whole business while thoughtful Americans – there are several of us – are equally mystified that the ruling establishment of the country has proved to be so mindlessly vindictive that it is willing, to be blunt, to overthrow the lawful government of the United States – that is, a president elected in 1992 and reelected in 1995 by We the People, that sole source of all political legitimacy, which takes precedence over the Constitution and the common law and God himself.

— Gore Vidal

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

— Gore Vidal

Heroes must see to their own fame. No one else will.

— Gore Vidal

History is idle gossip about a happening whose truth is lost the instant it has taken place.

— Gore Vidal

History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.

— Gore Vidal

[Howard's] eyes were open and very clear. I'd forgotten what a beautiful gray they were--illness and medicine had regularly glazed them over; now they were bright and attentive, and he was watching me, consciously, through long lashes. Lungs, heart may have stopped, but the optic nerves were still sending messages to a brain which, those who should now tell us, does not immediately shut down. So we stared at each other at the end... 'Can you hear me?' I asked him. 'I know you can see me.' Although there was no breath for speech, he now had a sort of wry wiseguy from the Bronx expression on his face which said clearly to me who knew all his expressions, 'So this is the big fucking deal everyone goes on about.

— Gore Vidal

I am afraid that as people grow old there is a tendency for them to believe that what the past *ought* to have been it was.

— Gore Vidal

Ideally, of course, a relationship is best, but then how many people are capable of deep feeling? Practically none.

— Gore Vidal

I have always regarded as a stroke of good fortune that I was not born or brought up in a small American town; they may be the backbone of the nation, but they are also the backbone of ignorance, bigotry, and boredom, all in vast quantities.

— Gore Vidal

I have never been an eavesdropper, even in childhood. Not from any sense of virtue but because I really do not want to know what people think of me or, to be precise, what they say of me - often a different matter. I can usually imagine the unpleasant judgements, for we are what others need us to be. That is why our reputations change so often and so drastically, reflecting no particular change in us, merely a change in the mood of those who observe us.

— Gore Vidal