Yesterday I read an interview with Gore Vidal in the online edition of The London Times, and it still resonates with me more than twenty-four hours later. Not the bulk of the interview, I hasten to add, but its very end. The interviewer asks him what he wants to do next. Vidal turns the question around. “My usual answer to ‘what I am proudest of’ is my novels, but, really, I am most proud that, despite enormous temptation, I have never killed anybody, and you don’t know how tempted I have been.” The interviewer interjects that this was not his question. “Well,” Vidal continues unperturbed, “given that I’m proudest that I haven’t killed anybody, I might be saving something up for someone.” They both laugh. Now, Vidal is exactly twenty years my senior, but I understand exactly what he means. Exactly! And I have a hunch that he would have been even prouder of himself had he killed that someone. For why save something so precious up for someone just to gab about it in an idle interview?