It is ironic that a nation that has never experienced a coup d'etat should be so obsessed with the idea of conspiracy.
Gore VidalYou will be favourable to Burr, and so must fail because the American reader cannot bear a surprise. He knows that this is the greatest country on earth, Washington the greatest man that ever lived, Burr the wickedest, and evidence to the contrary is not admissible. That means no inconvenient facts, no new information. If you really want the reader's attention, you must flatter him. Make his prejudices your own. Tell him things he already knows. He will love your soundness.
Gore VidalEverybody has two legs, two lobes to the brain which is why we tend to be interested in symmetry, always balancing things.
Gore VidalI write in the morning at a table, longhand on yellow legal pads, just like Nixon, when Iโm doing fiction.
Gore VidalWriting of history is our only heuristic principle. The Germans have a word for it, einfรผhlen. 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