Gore Vidal Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• 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.

  Gore Vidal

  Sarcastic, Book, Writing

  FaceBook post by Gore Vidal from Nov 18, 2010

• Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players. ... I have 10 or so, and thats a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.

  Gore Vidal

  Writing, Player, Casting

• Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!

  Gore Vidal

  Writing, Thinking, Advice

  Gore Vidal (1999). “The Essential Gore Vidal”, Random House Incorporated

• I write in the morning at a table, longhand on yellow legal pads, just like Nixon, when I’m doing fiction.

  Gore Vidal

  Morning, Writing, Yellow

• Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head.

  Gore Vidal

  Writing, Born, Company

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

• I wanted to be a politician and a movie star. But I was born a writer. If you're born that, you can't change it. You're going to do it whether you want to or not.~

  Gore Vidal

  Stars, Writing, Want

• In writing and politicking, it's best not to think about it, just do it.

  Gore Vidal

  Writing, Thinking, Just Do It

• The most interesting thing about writing is the way that it obliterates time. Three hours seem like three minutes.

  Gore Vidal

  Writing, Interesting, Three

  Gore Vidal, Richard Peabody, Lucinda Ebersole (2005). “Conversations with Gore Vidal”, p.59, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• I sometimes think it is because they are so bad at expressing themselves verbally that writers take to pen and paper in the first place

  Gore Vidal

  Writing, Thinking, Paper

• Writing of history is our only heuristic principle. The Germans have a word for it, einfühlen. It is the ability to experience the past in the present and to recreate it. In my books, I have tried to recreate it in the most natural way possible: History must be integrated into the story without the weight of premonition.

  Gore Vidal

  Book, Writing, Past

  "The End of Gore Vidal". Interview with Lila Azam Zanganeh, www.guernicamag.com. August 15, 2012.

• I suspect that one of the reasons we create fiction is to make sex exciting.

  Gore Vidal

  Sex, Writing, Fiction

  FaceBook post by Gore Vidal from Sep 17, 2011

• Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.

  Gore Vidal

  Writing, Alcohol, Bedtime

  Paris Review Interview (1981), later quoted in "Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Fifth Series", 1981.

• That famous writer’s block is a myth as far as I’m concerned. I think bad writers must have a great difficulty writing. They don’t want to do it. They have become writers out of reasons of ambition. It must be a great strain to them to make marks on a page when they really have nothing much to say, and don’t enjoy doing it. I’m not so sure what I have to say but I certainly enjoy making sentences.

  Gore Vidal

  Block, Writing, Ambition

  FaceBook post by Gore Vidal from Aug 06, 2012

• Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge. What he takes in he takes in normally the way any person takes in experience. But it is what is done with it in his mind, if he is a real writer, that makes his art.

  Gore Vidal

  Art, Real, Writing

• Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.

  Gore Vidal

  Country, Business, Writing

• A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is ability to articulate human relationships.

  Gore Vidal

  Drama, Writing, Genius

  1956 In the New York Times,17 Jun.

• Teaching has ruined more American novelists than drink.

  Gore Vidal

  Education, Teaching, Drinking

• Write something, even if it's just a suicide note.

  Gore Vidal

  Suicide, Writing, Notes

  Gore Vidal, Richard Peabody, Lucinda Ebersole (2005). “Conversations with Gore Vidal”, p.17, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• The brain that doesn't feed itself, eats itself.

  Gore Vidal

  Writing, Brain

• You can't really succeed with a novel anyway; they're too big. It's like city planning. You can't plan a perfect city because there's too much going on that you can't take into account. You can, however, write a perfect sentence now and then. I have.

  Gore Vidal

  Writing, Cities, Perfect

  Gore Vidal, Richard Peabody, Lucinda Ebersole (2005). “Conversations with Gore Vidal”, p.137, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• The most interesting thing about writing is the way that it obliterates time. Three hours seem like three minutes. Then there is the business of surprise. I never know what is coming next. The phrase that sounds in the head changes when it appears on the page. Then I start probing it with a pen, finding new meanings. Sometimes I burst out laughing at what is happening as I twist and turn sentences. Strange business, all in all. One never gets to the end of it. That’s why I go on, I suppose. To see what the next sentences I write will be.

  Gore Vidal

  Writing, Laughing, Interesting

• The first TV babies are now writing with a TV mind that has no attention span at all.

  Gore Vidal

  Baby, Writing, Mind

• 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

  Sex, Writing, Giving

  Gore Vidal (1968). “Sex, Death, and Money”

• Writing when you are already very old means you have lived through the endings of so many things, you are more aware of the shape life takes. You begin to know Death, you've been close to it. But youth can barely imagine the end of this journey.

  Gore Vidal

  Writing, Mean, Journey

  "The End of Gore Vidal". Interview with Lila Azam Zanganeh, www.guernicamag.com. August 15, 2012.

• If you are at the mercy of what they call print interviews and the mercy of people who write about you, they can always tell lies.

  Gore Vidal

  Lying, Writing, People

  "Fresh Air Remembers Writer And Critic Gore Vidal". www.npr.org. August 2, 2012.

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