Perhaps the only thing Gore Vidal enjoyed more than dispensing witticisms—or sipping a Macallan single malt—was being photographed. In observance of what would have been his 100th birthday this week, AIR MAIL’s Photo Director, Ann Schneider, and Research & Legal Editor, Matt Kapp, share some of their favorite Vidal photographs and quotes. Nothing if not prolific, Vidal wrote more than two dozen novels, eight plays, 16 screenplays, and hundreds of essays and magazine articles, spanning nearly 70 years.
“A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.”
“Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.”
“The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country—and we haven’t seen them since.”
“The unfed mind devours itself.”
“Never pass up the opportunity to have sex or appear on television.”
“You can bullshit someone older than you, and you can bullshit someone younger than you, but you can never bullshit a contemporary.”
“Andy Warhol is the only genius I’ve ever known with an I.Q. of 60.”
“Truman Capote has made lying an art—a minor art.”
“Envy is the central fact of American life.”
“There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party, and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat.”
“We are the United States of Amnesia; we learn nothing because we remember nothing.”
“There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.”
“Write something, even if it’s just a suicide note.”
Matt Kapp produced the 2003 documentary The Education of Gore Vidal. Ann Schneider directed photo research for Vidal’s final book, Gore Vidal: Snapshots in History’s Glare. Both remained friends with Vidal until his death, in 2012. Neither thinks he would be surprised by America’s current state of affairs
