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Edmund White Quotes

Of course the success of A Boy’s Own Story took me utterly off guard Picture Quote #1

I saw literature as a fantasy, no less absorbing for all its irrelevance - a parallel life, as dreams shadow waking but never intersect it Picture Quote #1

In the middle of my sophomore year, I was sent to boarding school, at the Cranbrook School for boys, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where I fell in love with Marilyn Monroe. I knew that she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and yet she was in pain, in need. She was unhappy. I believed that I could help her Picture Quote #1

Europeans forget that one-third of the American people have had a personal conversation with Jesus Christ and that the born-again are not just little old ladies in black but also CEOs and provosts of universities and candidates for office Picture Quote #1

Nobody in France would ever say ‘He’s a Jewish novelist’ or ‘She’s a black novelist,’ even though people do write about those subjects. It would look absurd to a French person to go into a bookstore and see a ‘Gay Studies’ section Picture Quote #1

I do probably come down a little hard on a group of people I call the ‘blue chip gays.’ I mean people who have managed to become very, very famous and are still very famous partly through staying in the closet, like Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, Susan Sontag, Harold Brodkey and others Picture Quote #1

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If I had been straight, I would have been an entirely different person. I would never have turned toward writing with a burning desire to confess, to understand, to justify myself in the eyes of others... I wouldn’t have been impelled to live in New York and choose the hard poverty of bohemia over the soft comfort of the business world Picture Quote #1

In the 1970s in New York, everyone slept till noon. It was a grungy, dangerous, bankrupt city without normal services most of the time. The garbage piled up and stank during long strikes by the sanitation workers. A major blackout led to days and days of looting. The city seemed either frightening or risible to the rest of the nation Picture Quote #1

In a novel, I think you have a contract with the reader to make the character representative - of a moment in history, a social class... for instance, I wanted to make the boy in ‘A Boy’s Own Story’ more like other gay men of my generation in their youth and not like me Picture Quote #1

Everyone seems agreed that writing about sex is perilous, partly because it threatens to swamp highly individualised characters in a generic, featureless activity (much like coffee-cup dialogue, during which everyone sounds the same), and partly because it feels... tacky Picture Quote #1

I used to think that I could be successful if I pretended to be a 23-year-old black woman. I wanted to find a young black woman who would be willing to go in on this with me. I would write her novels, and then she would do the touring. I always thought I was too old and the wrong color Picture Quote #1

I think I’m very stoic. Death and dying are things that I’m used to Picture Quote #1

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Barack Obama’s decision to come out in favour of gay marriage may be a historic occasion, but it is not an isolated one. His administration has been making pro-gay noises for some time; his demographic in the upcoming election is young and educated, precisely the group that favours equality for the LGBT community Picture Quote #1

Readers of novels often fall into the bad habit of being overly exacting about the characters’ moral flaws. They apply to these fictional beings standards that no one they know in real life could possibly meet Picture Quote #1

I can remember in the late 1980s and early 1990s how many men with AIDS I saw everywhere in Key West. There were hospices and medical supply stores geared to people with AIDS. It seemed that every sick man who could afford it had headed for the warmth and the tranquillity and the gay-friendliness of the island Picture Quote #1

There ought to be more grants that go to people in their late twenties and early thirties. That’s a crucial age, although it’s very hard to judge who is worth supporting and who is not. Looking back on my own life, I see that was the period when I was closest to giving up as a novelist and when I most needed some encouragement Picture Quote #1

It’s true that Paris is made up of equal parts of social conservatism and anarchic experimentation, but foreigners never quite know where to place the moral accent mark Picture Quote #1

I’ve always been impelled to say the truth. When I was 14, in 1954, I already wrote a gay novel, though I’d never read one. I felt that life handed me a great subject, gay life, that had scarcely been examined, and I was impelled to record it in all its strange detail Picture Quote #1

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If you’re a beach person or a golfer, Key West is not for you. Most of the sand has been imported, and the water is shallow until you’ve waded far out, and all the way the sea floor is covered with yucky algae and sea grass Picture Quote #1

Perhaps no other body of literature is as subject to political pressures from within the community as gay fiction Picture Quote #1

At certain crucial moments - an emergency or an opportunity - one must act first and think later Picture Quote #1

When my lover Hubert Sorin was dying of AIDS, he was always trying to fix me up - posthumously, as it were - with the cute busboy at the hotel Picture Quote #1

In Paris, AIDS was dismissed as an American phobia until French people started dying; then everyone said, ‘Well, you have to die some way or another.’ If Americans were hysterical and pragmatic, the French were fatalistic: depressed but determined to keep the party going Picture Quote #1

Paradoxically, since gay men rarely have gay parents, cultural transmission must come from friends or strangers (a problem since the generations so seldom mix in gay life) Picture Quote #1

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There are a lot of historical novelists who do the research about the clothes and maybe even the eating utensils, but they’re basically taking modern people and putting them in old drag - it’s sort of the ‘Gone With the Wind’ approach Picture Quote #1

The French are pretty thin-skinned. The few times I mentioned a French writer in ‘City Boy,’ the relatives would ring up in high dudgeon. I once wrote a mocking review of Marguerite Duras in the ‘New York Review of Books,’ and good friends of mine in France got very angry Picture Quote #1

Perhaps we’d understood each other too well to be attracted to one another. There were no occlusions in communication, those breaks in understanding that awaken desire Picture Quote #1

Do we regard language as more public, more ceremonial, than thought? Just as family men condemn the profanity on the stage that they use constantly in conversation, in the same way we may look to written language as an idealization rather than a reflection of ourselves Picture Quote #1

Perhaps I became so vague, so exhilarated with vagueness, precisely in order to forestall a recognition of the final term of the syllogism that begins: If one man loves another he is a homosexual; I love a man Picture Quote #1

As a young teenager I looked desperately for things to read that might excuse me or assure me I wasn’t the only one, that might confirm an identity I was unhappily piecing together Picture Quote #1

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Friendship Quotes

Motivational Quotes

Inspirational Quotes

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Text Quotes

Of course the success of A Boy’s Own Story took me utterly off guard (Edmund White Quotes) I saw literature as a fantasy, no less absorbing for all its irrelevance - a parallel life, as dreams shadow waking but never intersect it. (Edmund White Quotes) In the middle of my sophomore year, I was sent to boarding school, at the Cranbrook School for boys, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where I fell in love with Marilyn Monroe. I knew that she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and yet she was in pain, in need. She was unhappy. I believed that I could help her. (Edmund White Quotes) Europeans forget that one-third of the American people have had a personal conversation with Jesus Christ and that the born-again are not just little old ladies in black but also CEOs and provosts of universities and candidates for office. (Edmund White Quotes) Nobody in France would ever say ‘He’s a Jewish novelist’ or ‘She’s a black novelist,’ even though people do write about those subjects. It would look absurd to a French person to go into a bookstore and see a ‘Gay Studies’ section. (Edmund White Quotes) I do probably come down a little hard on a group of people I call the ‘blue chip gays.’ I mean people who have managed to become very, very famous and are still very famous partly through staying in the closet, like Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, Susan Sontag, Harold Brodkey and others. (Edmund White Quotes) If I had been straight, I would have been an entirely different person. I would never have turned toward writing with a burning desire to confess, to understand, to justify myself in the eyes of others... I wouldn’t have been impelled to live in New York and choose the hard poverty of bohemia over the soft comfort of the business world. (Edmund White Quotes) In the 1970s in New York, everyone slept till noon. It was a grungy, dangerous, bankrupt city without normal services most of the time. The garbage piled up and stank during long strikes by the sanitation workers. A major blackout led to days and days of looting. The city seemed either frightening or risible to the rest of the nation. (Edmund White Quotes) In a novel, I think you have a contract with the reader to make the character representative - of a moment in history, a social class... for instance, I wanted to make the boy in ‘A Boy’s Own Story’ more like other gay men of my generation in their youth and not like me. (Edmund White Quotes) Everyone seems agreed that writing about sex is perilous, partly because it threatens to swamp highly individualised characters in a generic, featureless activity (much like coffee-cup dialogue, during which everyone sounds the same), and partly because it feels... tacky. (Edmund White Quotes) I used to think that I could be successful if I pretended to be a 23-year-old black woman. I wanted to find a young black woman who would be willing to go in on this with me. I would write her novels, and then she would do the touring. I always thought I was too old and the wrong color. (Edmund White Quotes) I think I’m very stoic. Death and dying are things that I’m used to. (Edmund White Quotes) Barack Obama’s decision to come out in favour of gay marriage may be a historic occasion, but it is not an isolated one. His administration has been making pro-gay noises for some time; his demographic in the upcoming election is young and educated, precisely the group that favours equality for the LGBT community. (Edmund White Quotes) Readers of novels often fall into the bad habit of being overly exacting about the characters’ moral flaws. They apply to these fictional beings standards that no one they know in real life could possibly meet. (Edmund White Quotes) I can remember in the late 1980s and early 1990s how many men with AIDS I saw everywhere in Key West. There were hospices and medical supply stores geared to people with AIDS. It seemed that every sick man who could afford it had headed for the warmth and the tranquillity and the gay-friendliness of the island. (Edmund White Quotes) There ought to be more grants that go to people in their late twenties and early thirties. That’s a crucial age, although it’s very hard to judge who is worth supporting and who is not. Looking back on my own life, I see that was the period when I was closest to giving up as a novelist and when I most needed some encouragement. (Edmund White Quotes) It’s true that Paris is made up of equal parts of social conservatism and anarchic experimentation, but foreigners never quite know where to place the moral accent mark. (Edmund White Quotes) I’ve always been impelled to say the truth. When I was 14, in 1954, I already wrote a gay novel, though I’d never read one. I felt that life handed me a great subject, gay life, that had scarcely been examined, and I was impelled to record it in all its strange detail. (Edmund White Quotes) If you’re a beach person or a golfer, Key West is not for you. Most of the sand has been imported, and the water is shallow until you’ve waded far out, and all the way the sea floor is covered with yucky algae and sea grass. (Edmund White Quotes) Perhaps no other body of literature is as subject to political pressures from within the community as gay fiction. (Edmund White Quotes) At certain crucial moments - an emergency or an opportunity - one must act first and think later (Edmund White Quotes) When my lover Hubert Sorin was dying of AIDS, he was always trying to fix me up - posthumously, as it were - with the cute busboy at the hotel. (Edmund White Quotes) In Paris, AIDS was dismissed as an American phobia until French people started dying; then everyone said, ‘Well, you have to die some way or another.’ If Americans were hysterical and pragmatic, the French were fatalistic: depressed but determined to keep the party going. (Edmund White Quotes) Paradoxically, since gay men rarely have gay parents, cultural transmission must come from friends or strangers (a problem since the generations so seldom mix in gay life). (Edmund White Quotes) There are a lot of historical novelists who do the research about the clothes and maybe even the eating utensils, but they’re basically taking modern people and putting them in old drag - it’s sort of the ‘Gone With the Wind’ approach. (Edmund White Quotes) The French are pretty thin-skinned. The few times I mentioned a French writer in ‘City Boy,’ the relatives would ring up in high dudgeon. I once wrote a mocking review of Marguerite Duras in the ‘New York Review of Books,’ and good friends of mine in France got very angry. (Edmund White Quotes) Perhaps we’d understood each other too well to be attracted to one another. There were no occlusions in communication, those breaks in understanding that awaken desire (Edmund White Quotes) Do we regard language as more public, more ceremonial, than thought? Just as family men condemn the profanity on the stage that they use constantly in conversation, in the same way we may look to written language as an idealization rather than a reflection of ourselves (Edmund White Quotes) Perhaps I became so vague, so exhilarated with vagueness, precisely in order to forestall a recognition of the final term of the syllogism that begins: If one man loves another he is a homosexual; I love a man (Edmund White Quotes) As a young teenager I looked desperately for things to read that might excuse me or assure me I wasn’t the only one, that might confirm an identity I was unhappily piecing together (Edmund White Quotes)

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