Date of Birth: October 3, 1925
Birthplace: West Point, NY
Current Residence: La Rondinaia, Ravello, Salerno, Italy
Education: Some ballet lessons for his arthritic knees

Certainly one knows more at forty than one did at twenty. And contrary to all American mythology, the novel is the rightful province not of the young but of the middle-aged.
-Gore Vidal, New York Times Book Review, November 14, 1965

There is a whole new televison generation which has grown up and since I'm dedicated to the written culture, I find that rather dismaying. It's like being one of the greatest living makers of stained glass windows and the age of faith has ended. I'm at the top of a very tiny heap.
-Gore Vidal, New York Times, March 12, 1981

Gore Vidal is an elated stylist. He carries weights of packed allusion with a buoyant air. In so far as he has an argument he is well on top of it. What is most characteristic of him...is a kind of mock pomposity. The learning or the pseudo learning verges on the hectoring or lecturing manner. But just as he seems about to cross the line which divides riding high from pomposity, he wheels his charger around and turns the whole thing into a joke...
-Stephen Spender, New York Review of Books, March 22, 1973