Uit een interview met Paris review uit 1974:

INTERVIEWER: Have you ever had any trouble with writer’s block?

VIDAL: No.

INTERVIEWER: When you get up in the morning to write, do you just sit down and start out with your pen? You don’t have any devices you use to . . . ?

VIDAL: First coffee. Then a bowel movement. Then the muse joins me.

INTERVIEWER: You don’t sharpen pencils or anything like that?

VIDAL :No. But I often read for an hour or two. Clearing the mind. I’m always reluctant to start work, and reluctant to stop. The most interesting thing about writing is the way that it obliterates time. Three hours seem like three minutes. Then there is the business of surprise. I never know what is coming next. The phrase that sounds in the head changes when it appears on the page. Then I start probing it with a pen, finding new meanings. Sometimes I burst out laughing at what is happening as I twist and turn sentences. Strange business, all in all. One never gets to the end of it. That’s why I go on, I suppose. To see what the next sentences I write will be.