A Quote by Gore Vidal

What I am is something unbearable for the world of journalism and the world of cliches. I'm a realist.

Gore Vidal

Quote Topics

Am Cliches Journalism Realist Something Unbearable World

Quote Author

Gore Vidal
American - Writer
October 3, 1925 - July 31, 2012

Beware of clichés. Not just the clichés that Martin Amis is at war with. There are clichés of response as well as expression. There are clichés of observation and of thought - even of conception. Many novels, even quite a few adequately written ones, are clichés of form which conform to clichés of expectation.

Geoff Dyer

I am not a surrealist. I am only a realist. All this group - surrealists - use my name. No, no, I am realist.

Andre Kertesz

What I dislike is conventional realism - a system of gestures, descriptions, psychological revelations that was once a vital way of representing the world but has become hackneyed through endless repetition. I'd argue that a conventional realist isn't a realist at all, but a falsifier of the real.

Steven Millhauser

I am a reader. I am a writer. People assume I do these things to escape. You couldn't be more right. I'm escaping a world I don't like. A world I have no control in. In this world, I am nothing. I am a color, a height, a weight, a number. But in the world of books and writing, I am amazing. I am powerful. I am different. People are better. Worlds are endless. Change is possible. Life is manageable.

Philip K. Dick

'Line of Duty' is a social realist drama, so it's set in a world that has the recognisable features of the authentic world we see around us.

Jed Mercurio

Is the world so unbearable? No! What we need is only a little more love for the world.

Sri Chinmoy

I set many of my stories in a gritty "realist" world, but one that is plagued by an overuse of technology, which is akin to the world we find ourselves living in now.

Alexander Weinstein

I am grateful to journalism for waking me up to the realities of the world.

Eduardo Galeano

Journalism is concerned with events, poetry with feelings. Journalism is concerned with the look of the world, poetry with the feel of the world.

Archibald MacLeish

To idealize: all writing is a campaign against cliché. Not just clichés of the pen but clichés of the mind and clichés of the heart.

Martin Amis

When reality becomes unbearable, the mind must withdraw from it and create a world of artificial perfection. Plato's world of pure Ideas and Forms, which alone is to be considered as real, whereas the world of nature which we perceive is merely its cheap Woolworth copy, is a flight into delusion.

Arthur Koestler

When I am writing best, I really am lost in my world. I lose track of the outside world. I have a difficult time balancing between my real world and the artificial world.

George R. R. Martin

One of the sad things about contemporary journalism is that it actually matters very little. The world now is almost inured to the power of journalism. The best journalism would manage to outrage people. And people are less and less inclined to outrage.