Playboy Magazine has published its conversations with Gore Vidal from the June 1969 Playboy Interview, the December 1987 Playboy Interview and the December 1998 20 Questions in their entirety for tablet subscribers to i.playboy.com. You’ll find a few excerpts here, including these:

“If I were to be a serious politician, it was quite plain that I could not be a serious writer. Not only is there not enough energy for the two careers, they are incompatible. The writer is forever trying to say exactly what he means and the politician is forever trying to avoid saying what he means. I chose to be a novelist.”

“I don’t conform to any of the ideas of what an American writer should be. Either you’re academic or you’re popular. Either you are an upholder of the status quo or you are a romantic subversive. I don’t think I’m like anybody else on the scene, and I think that has caused disturbance. You’re not supposed to have as large an audience as I do if you’re any good. There is a true hatred of popularity, but if literature is too good for the people, what is it good for?”

“As for being remembered — I have little interest in the idea of posterity. Think of the thousands of years of Egyptian literature, entirely lost. What survives and what does not is simply a matter of chance, and so incalculable. All that matters to me is what I do this morning, and that I do it — and am here.”