Tracing Quotations
Donald Barthelme? Fannie Hurst? Gore Vidal? Dear Quote Investigator: A wide variety of sayings have employed the following template: You may not be interested in X, but X is interested in you. Different terms have been substituted for X including: war, politics, dialectic, and strategy. In addition, variant templates have occurred: We may not be …
Continue reading “You May Not Be Interested in Absurdity, But Absurdity Is Interested in You”
Paul Valéry? W. H. Auden? Anaïs Nin? Maya Deren? Jean Cocteau? Esther Kellner? Gene Fowler? Gore Vidal? Marianne Moore? George Lucas? Oscar Wilde? Question for Quote Investigator: A creative person who is absorbed with the task of generating an artwork hesitates to declare completion. Reworking and improving a piece is always a tantalizing possibility. Here …
Continue reading “A Work of Art Is Never Finished, Merely Abandoned”
Gore Vidal? Lucinda Ebersole? Rand B. Lee? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Aspiring authors are typically told to set aside enough time to make writing into a daily habit. The provocative author Gore Vidal apparently employed an extreme version of this injunction: Write something, even if it’s just a suicide note. Did Vidal coin this astringently …
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Peter Drucker? Gore Vidal? Professor Giddings? Jesse H. Shera? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: I belong to an organization which is expending an inordinate effort perfecting the execution of a task that is peripheral to its mission. A famous management guru spoke about the pointlessness of efficiently performing a function that should not be done at …
Gore Vidal? Stormont Mancroft? Gareth Williams? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: The following quotation has been attributed to the writer and political commentator Gore Vidal: The four most beautiful words in the English language are ‘I told you so’. Was this statement crafted by Vidal? Quote Investigator: Gore Vidal did employ versions of this saying on …
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Gore Vidal? Wilfrid Sheed? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: There is a mordant expression that reflects the corrosive nature of jealousy. Here are four versions: 1) Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies. 2) Every time a friend succeeds I die a little. 3) When a friend succeeds, a small part of me …
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Gore Vidal? La Rochefoucauld? W. Somerset Maugham? Wilfrid Sheed? Iris Murdoch? David Merrick? Genghis Khan? Larry Ellison? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Competition and jealousy are reflected in a family of closely related cynical sayings: It is not enough to succeed; one’s best friend must fail. It is not enough to succeed; one’s friends must fail. …
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Speaker: Gore Vidal? Peter Bogdanovich? Sue Mengers? Jason Epstein? Anonymous? Subject: Truman Capote? Elvis Presley? Michael Jackson? Gore Vidal? Dear Quote Investigator: Pop star Michael Jackson died in 2009 when he was only fifty years old. One memorably caustic remark I heard at that time was: His death was a good career move. Apparently, the …
Gore Vidal? Franklin P. Adams? George S. Kaufman? Mary Horan? Chico Marx? Walter Winchell? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: The holiday season is here, and I have a question about a pun. A critic once told Gore Vidal that one of his novels was meretricious and Gore pointedly replied: Really? Well, meretricious and a happy New …
Gore Vidal? Lewis H. Lapham? Fictional? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: When I watch reality television shows today I can only conclude that some people will do anything to be on television. This fits the advice the famous author Gore Vidal apparently gave: Never turn down an opportunity to have sex or to be on television …
Continue reading “Never Miss a Chance to Have Sex or Appear On Television”