Gore Vidal

Most lives are spent putting on and taking off masks.

Since no one can ever know for certain whether or not his own view of life is the correct one, it is absolutely impossible for him to know if someone else's is the wrong one.

Those who have not undergone minor disasters are being held in reserve for something major.
- All from Gore Vidal

About: Eugene Luther Vidal was born at West Point, New York on this day in 1925, his father was an aeronautics instructor at the military academy. His maternal grandfather, Thomas P. Gore (whose name Vidal would later assume) was a senator from Oklahoma. Senator Gore was blind, so young Vidal often read aloud for him and sometimes acted as a guide, giving him early exposure to the workings of power. A skilled wordsmith, anybody would enjoy his historical novels, he has scandalized and alienated a wide range of America's elite with his unconventional thinking and wicked aphorisms.