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Who really said it

Never Miss a Chance to Have Sex or Appear On Television

Attributed to Gore Vidal 1925–2012 · American novelist, essayist and public intellectual
Attributed — Vidal claimed it on air, but it is a spoken quip and the wording has never settled. In copyright

The saying is Gore Vidal’s, and he said so himself. Asked about it on the Charlie Rose show on 31 December 2009, he replied: “I said that to Diane Sawyer.” The earliest documented appearance in print is older — Lewis H. Lapham’s column “The Easy Chair: The American Courtier” in Harper’s for October 1978, page 17 — and it credits Vidal there too. Quote Investigator ↗ finds “good evidence that Gore Vidal employed this adage during the 1970s” while cautioning that “the phrasing is highly variable.”

Last verified 9 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“Never Miss a Chance to Have Sex or Appear On Television” Gore Vidal. Earliest documented in Lewis H. Lapham, "The Easy Chair: The American Courtier," Harper's, October 1978, page 17, where it is already credited to Vidal. Vidal confirmed it on the Charlie Rose show, 31 December 2009. The wording varies: "never pass up a chance" is just as common.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Harper’s Magazine and the estate of Gore Vidal). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Gore Vidal — American novelist, essayist and public intellectual. Theme: "Never Miss a Chance to Have Sex or Appear On Television". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Never Miss a Chance to Have Sex or Appear On Television". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Earliest documented appearance
The Easy Chair: The American Courtier
Printed by
Lewis H. Lapham · Harper’s, October 1978, page 17 — credited to Vidal there
Confirmed by the author
Gore Vidal, on the Charlie Rose show, 31 December 2009
Wording
Unstable — “never miss” and “never pass up” both circulate widely

Never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television. As printed in Harper’s, October 1978

Vidal appears never to have written the line down. It reaches us through other people’s reporting of his talk — Lapham in Harper’s in 1978, then a run of newspapers and quotation books through the 1980s. Vidal’s own account, given to Charlie Rose in 2009, is that he said it to Diane Sawyer. We could not consult the 1978 issue of Harper’s ourselves; the wording and the page locator come from Quote Investigator ↗

Quote Investigator: from Lapham’s 1978 column to Vidal’s own confirmation

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator’s investigation ↗ gives the earliest citation as Lewis H. Lapham’s column “The Easy Chair: The American Courtier” in Harper’s, October 1978, page 17 — where the adage is already credited to Gore Vidal, not claimed by Lapham.
  • Its conclusion: “there is good evidence that Gore Vidal employed this adage during the 1970s, and he has directly taken credit for the coinage. The phrasing is highly variable.” The credit-taking is on the record — QI reproduces the exchange from the Charlie Rose show of 31 December 2009, in which Rose asks about the line and Vidal answers, “I said that to Diane Sawyer.”
  • The chronology QI assembles runs through the Washington Post in 1982, Bob Chieger’s Was It Good for You, Too? in 1983 (page 238), Lapham again in the Baltimore Sun in 1985, Michael Kinsley in the Washington Post in 1988, and the Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations in 2008 (page 319) — Vidal named throughout.
  • We read Wikiquote’s Gore Vidal page ↗ in full. It carries the line in its sourced quotes, not in its Misattributed section — but in the form “Never pass up a chance to have sex or appear on television,” cited to the same 1983 Chieger book from which QI quotes “never miss.” Two careful sources, one book, two wordings: that is what QI means by highly variable.
  • Dates checked independently: Gore Vidal, 3 October 1925 – 31 July 2012 ↗, and Lewis H. Lapham, 8 January 1935 – 23 July 2024 ↗, who edited Harper’s from 1976 to 1981 — which is where the October 1978 column sits.
In copyright

There is no pre-1931 publication here to fall back on. The earliest text carrying the wording is Lapham’s Harper’s column of October 1978, and every later source QI cites is later still, so the printed forms are in copyright. Quoting the one-line adage with attribution is ordinary quotation; reproducing Lapham’s column is not.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Who gets the credit, and who only carried it

This quotation is unusual: the man whose name sits on the earliest printed source never claimed it, and the man who did claim it left nothing in writing.

Lewis H. Lapham Recorder, not the author

Lapham printed the line first, in Harper’s in October 1978, and returned to it in the Baltimore Sun in 1985. But he credited Vidal on both occasions, and Quote Investigator ↗ nowhere suggests he coined it. Being the earliest source for a saying is not the same as being its author — the confusion is what put his name on this page.

“Never pass up” versus “never miss” Wording drift

Both forms are everywhere, and a first-person variant (“I never miss a chance…”) circulates too. Wikiquote prints the “pass up” form ↗ citing Bob Chieger’s Was It Good for You, Too? (1983), while QI quotes “never miss” from page 238 of the same book. QI’s verdict on the whole family is short: “The phrasing is highly variable.”

Best evidence: Gore Vidal, spoken — earliest in print in Lewis H. Lapham, “The Easy Chair: The American Courtier,” Harper’s, October 1978, page 17, and confirmed by Vidal himself on the Charlie Rose show in December 2009 ↗

Context

Why it mattered

The line belongs to a moment when American writers were working out that television was a place to be somebody rather than a distraction from the writing. Vidal, who spent a great deal of his career on air, is telling the joke about himself as much as about anyone else.

It has since become a stock line about media vanity, quoted at people who chase the camera. Quote Investigator ends its own piece with the driest possible note on that: “it is not clear how closely Vidal has followed his own advice.”

“I said that to Diane Sawyer.” — Gore Vidal, asked on television whether he had said it.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Success Power

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigatorquoteinvestigator.com

The 1978 Harper’s citation, the chronology to 2008, and Vidal’s on-air confirmation
Wikiquote: Gore Vidalen.wikiquote.org

Carries the “never pass up” form among his sourced quotes, cited to Chieger (1983)
Wikipedia: Gore Vidalen.wikipedia.org

The novelist and essayist known for his epigrammatic wit: 1925–2012
Wikipedia: Lewis H. Laphamen.wikipedia.org

Editor of Harper’s 1976–1981 and 1983–2006, and the first to print the line

The author

About Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal

1925–2012 · American novelist, essayist and public intellectual

Gore Vidal (1925–2012), born Eugene Louis Vidal, was an American writer and public intellectual known for his cynical, epigrammatic wit. His novels and essays attacked the social and sexual norms he saw driving American life, and he ran twice, unsuccessfully, as a Democratic candidate — for the House in 1960 and the Senate in 1982. A grandson of Senator Thomas Gore, he spent much of his career on television, which is the joke this line is making.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

Lapham, Lewis H. “The Easy Chair: The American Courtier.” Harper’s, October 1978, page 17 — quoting Gore Vidal. Earliest documented appearance, per Quote Investigator ↗; Vidal took credit for the line on the Charlie Rose show, 31 December 2009.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Never Miss a Chance to Have Sex or Appear On Television’?” Last verified 9 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/never-miss-a-chance-to-have-sex-or-appear-on-television/

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