During the late '50s, I had worked on the script of Ben-Hur in an office next to that of the producer Sam Zimbalist.
— Gore Vidal
What the Kinseyites and I had in common so long ago was the knowledge that homosexual and heterosexual behavior are natural to all mammals, and that what differs from individual to individual is the balance between these two complementary but not necessarily conflicted drives.
'The Turner Diaries' is a racist daydream by a former physics teacher writing under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald.
I'm always an optimist!
I know a lot of the Annapolis breed.
I can't name three first-rate literary critics in the United States. I'm told there are a few hidden away at universities, but they don't print them in 'The New York Times.'
Does one ever read a politician's books?
Certainly 'The Judgment of Paris' was the novel in which I found my own voice.
Didn't George Washington say, 'He who controls Afghanistan will carry New Jersey?'
Love is not my bag.
The first grown-up book that I read on my own was a nineteenth-century edition of 'Tales from Livy' that I'd found in my grandfather's library.
I am not, at heart, a playwright.
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.
The only thing that I react really violently to is being misquoted.
I never said I was gay, because I don't think anyone is.
From April 1775 to July 1776, the undeclared war between England and its American colonies smoldered, flared up, appeared to sputter out... It was hardly, ever, a mass rebellion.
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.
Some have deplored Lincoln's indifference to Christianity. But it was not religion, it was religiosity that put him off.
As a schoolboy, I read most of Carl Sandburg's six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln.
Like the TV networks, once our government has a hit, it will be repeated over and over again.
Boys don't like girls around when they do boy things.
Remember, I'm West Point, where I was born. My father went there.
By 1939, the Depression was back. Unemployment was huge. Roosevelt didn't have any quick fix. Remember, the New Deal, Works Progress Administration, and Civilian Conservation Corps - all that happened years before. Roosevelt was riding a storm.
As for my support for Obama, remember that I was brought up in Washington. It was an all-black city when I was a kid. And I've always been very pro-African-American - or whatever phrase we now use.
Between fourteen and nineteen, I must have begun and abandoned six novels.
When I say 'president,' I still mean Roosevelt - wisely, I think.
I'm exactly as I appear. There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water.
There is only one party in the United States: the Property party... and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat.
Envy is the central fact of American life.
Everything's wrong on Wikipedia.
I think I have a normal threshold of anger, but it's true that I am, by nature, belligerent.
The United States is a madhouse.
On September 5, 1774, forty-five of the weightiest colonial men formed the First Continental Congress at Philadelphia.
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.
Each youth betrays considerable anxiety about the wedding night ahead.
In essence, Clinton's Anti-Terrorism Act would set up a national police force, over the long-dead bodies of the founders.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist - I'm a conspiracy analyst.
Every generation gets the Tiny Tim it deserves.
I don't even read most reviews, unless there is a potential lawsuit on view.
My family is Southern. I'm used to Bill Clintons.
In the writing of novels, there is the problem of how to shape a narrative.
Actually, I can't remember when I was not writing.
I am told the Cheney-Bush team dislikes their junta being compared to the Nazis. If they ceased behaving like Nazis, no comparison would come to mind.
I never wanted to be a writer. I mean, that's the last thing I wanted.
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.
You cannot deprive somebody of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, because that is a right - constitutional right.
My father once said something very shrewd about me to a woman journalist who had told him how courageous she thought I was for always speaking my mind. My father said, 'If you couldn't care less what anyone says about you, then it's not courage.'
I'm not paranoid, no. I'm different in that I have enemies. Very real ones.
I was like everyone else when Obama was elected - optimistic.
Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they're both just aspirin.
