Would it be anything like a literary disaster if Gore Vidal were to fall silent? Easy. No. In fact, there is something to be said for the idea.

Everywhere you hang your hat is home. Home is the bright cave under the hat.

The Church became both more accessible and less imposing. It threw itself open to risk.

Never forget the power of silence, that massively disconcerting pause which goes on and on and may last induce an opponent to babble and backtrack nervously.

Africa has a genious for extremes, for the beginning and the end. It seems simultaneously connected to some memory of Eden and to some foretaste of apocalypse. Nowhere is day more vivid or night darker. Nowhere are forests more luxuriant. Nowhere is there a continent more miserable

People travel because it teaches them things they could learn no other way.

Not to forgive is to be imprisoned by the past, by old grievances that do not permit life to proceed with new business.