Vidal gives the impression of believing that the entire heterosexual edifice - registry offices, 'Romeo and Juliet,' the disposable diaper - is just a sorry story of self-hypnosis and mass hysteria: a hoax, a racket, or sheer propaganda.

When you’ve lost all your play, guess what love becomes. Work. Work that gets harder every hour.

It is straightforward — and never mind, for now, about plagues and famines: if God existed, and if he cared for humankind, he would never have given us religion.

I'm afraid the negative things are always the great subjects. Failure is much more interesting than success.

No novel has ever changed anything, as far as I can see.

It is very difficult, it is perhaps impossible, for someone who loves his mother to love the woman whom your father left her for.

My belief is that everything that's written about you is actually secondary showbiz nonsense, and you shouldn't take any notice of it.