Gore Vidal Quotes

I would rather write or record something great and have it overlooked than do mediocre work and have it be popular.

Only fools and philosophers waste time on the unknowable.

You can't do something that is morally vacuous or dysfunctional and then write it off saying, 'It wasn't my film, I was just doing a job in it.'

Not all offers I get are exciting and inspiring. I would rather sit at home and not work than jump into mediocrity for the sake of just moving ahead. If it's a good script, I would sacrifice my personal time and grab it.

School is practice for the future, and practice makes perfect and nobody's perfect so why bother.

I'd rather write one good book than ten mediocre ones.

There are values on Broadway that are dangerous: it's got to be Best Musical, it's got to make money, it's got to run a certain amount of time. Nowhere in this, of course, is there any mention of quality.

I am uncompromising to the point of huge dissension in the studio. And it's served me very well. My theory and my philosophy is, 'Compromise breeds mediocrity.' Obviously, you have to pick your battles, and the more success an artist has, the more they want to be involved in their own career, which is not necessarily a good thing.

As a general truth, it is safe to say that any picture that produces a moral impression is a bad picture.

Music is essentially useless, as is life.

Let not a man do what his sense of right bids him not to do, nor desire what it forbids him to desire. This is sufficient. The skillful artist will not alter his measures for the sake of a stupid workman.

For boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson of your life - the lesson of your utter insignificance.

I want to say 90% of stuff out there is just crap that got made. The main point is that it got produced.

My own idea is that these things are as piffle before the wind.

Fools, most linguists. Damn all to say in one language, so they learn another and say damn all in that.

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

It is sheer straight waste of life through dogged stupidity.

a charge of monumental inconsequentiality.

It is nothing.

A nothing will serve just as well as a something about which nothing could be said.

It is useless to live on burned ruins.

I don't necessarily go out and try to do something that's going to be just something that will please the audience. I'm not interested in doing something where I get the most people to come see the movie at the same time and they get the biggest explosion. I'm not interested in that.

I feel like, if I'm going to have young, impressionable people listening to my music, then I'm going to respect that.

It is hard to separate the art from the artist.

What I never want to do is start phoning it in and making things just to show that I can keep my foot in the door and do big movies.