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.

Vatican II was a force that seized the mind of the Roman Catholic Church and carried it across centuries from the 13th to the 20th.

Leaders make things possible. Exceptional leaders make them inevitable.

Handwriting is civilization's casual encephalogram.

A rattlesnake loose in the living room tends to end all discussion of animal rights.

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

Never try to wear a hat that has more character than you do.

As they marched, the crowds lining the route broke into applause, a sweet and deeply felt spontaneous pattering that was a sort of communal embrace. Welcome home.

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.

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

One can live with the thought of one's own death. It is the thought of the death of the words and books that is terrifying for that is the deeper extinction.

Love, kindness, compassion and forgiveness are divine.

After I read a good book, I have a hard time coping with reality.

. . . when my family headed out west, like any birth canal Rochester was forgotten.

You’re doing it again, ” he said.“Doing what?” I asked, wondering if I had done something wrong.“Melting my heart with your smile, ” he said.

Quing-Jao: I am a slave to the gods, and I rejoice in it.Jane: A slave who rejoices is a slave indeed.

This is the answer: live moment to moment and you become a buddha.

Human beings have survived for millennia because most of us make good decisions about our health most of the time.

And I wound up in New Orleans for all those years and it was a great place, really a catalyst creatively.

Without the light, no chance; without the dark, no dance.

Where hope would otherwise become hopelessness, it becomes faith.