Ian WhiteDaily Wit-1/2/2011: Gore Vidal
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. Early in his career he wrote The City and the Pillar (1948), which outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality. He subsequently emerged as one of America's most important literary figures due to the enormous quantity and quality of work produced over the course of his career, including novels, essays, plays, and short stories covering a wide variety of topics and eras. He also ran for political office twice and served as a longtime political critic.
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.
A good deed never goes unpunished.
A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.
Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an I.Q. of 60.
Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they're both just aspirin.
Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent.
I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel.
That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president.
Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either.
