60 Edmund White Quotes for You to Enjoy

Edmund White

American Novelist

Born: Jan 13, 1940

Gay Life Marriage Me People You

Related authors: Elie Wiesel Ernest Hemingway H. P. Lovecraft James Baldwin John Updike Leo Rosten Nathaniel Hawthorne Richard Bach

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

Man People Key Remember Men Every Sick Sick Man AIDS Late Saw Everywhere Geared Seemed Could Had Supply Headed Island How Were West Afford Tranquillity Stores Warmth Who Many Medical Early Early 1990s

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

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

People Old Wind Clothes Gone Research Approach Eating About Taking Putting Sort Lot Historical Modern Maybe Them Gone With The Wind Who Even Novelists Basically Drag

I was always ambitious - not to make money: to be published. Edmund White

Money Make Always Ambitious Published

When I was in college, I was always saying I was a socialist. Edmund White

Saying College Always Socialist

When a woman falls in love with me, I feel guilty. I am convinced that it's pure obstinacy that keeps me from reciprocating her passion. As I explain to her that I'm gay, it sounds, even to me, like a silly excuse; I scarcely believe it myself. Edmund White

I suppose people hadn't really thought each decade should have its own character and be different from the others till the 1920s, although I remember in a nineteenth-century Russian novel someone remarked that a character was a typical man of the 1830s - progressive and an atheist. Edmund White

The great triumph of the Sixties was to dramatize just how arbitrary and constructed the seeming normality of the Fifties had been. We rose up from our maple-wood twin beds and fell onto the great squishy, heated water bed of the Sixties. Edmund White

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

Love Beautiful Woman World School Most Beautiful Unhappy Beautiful Woman Year Pain Monroe Could Knew Sophomore Most Sophomore Year Fell Hills She Boy Michigan Middle Where Boarding Boarding School Sent Help Believed Her Need Marilyn Marilyn Monroe

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

Myself Business Eyes Writing World Poverty Live Others Would Entirely Impelled Never Had Toward Over New Comfort Understand Been Person Confess York New York Different Burning Burning Desire Justify Straight Turned Different Person Hard Choose Bohemia Business World Desire Soft

'One Hundred Years of Solitude' is a masterpiece because it is an episodic novel that has a rigorous form - an unprecedented combination. From the very beginning we know the town of Macondo will endure only a century, so there is a limit to the length of the narrative. Edmund White

Solitude Will Beginning Hundred Hundred Years Rigorous Unprecedented Only Combination Town Know Masterpiece Because Limit Narrative Years Very Endure Form Length Century Episodic Novel

These rejections hurt me terribly because I felt it was my life that was being rejected. Edmund White

Life Me Hurt My Life Terribly Because Felt Being Rejected Rejections

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

Life Fall Real Life Meet Characters Possibly Bad Moral Exacting Bad Habit About Habit Could No-One Know Readers Real Overly Often Being Fictional Flaws Standards Beings Novels Apply

New York has been the subject of thousands of books. Every immigrant group has had its saga as has every epoch and social class. Edmund White

Class Group Every Books Immigrant Has-Been Thousands Had New Saga Been Subject York New York Social Social Class Epoch

Biography can be the most middle-class of all forms, the judgment of little people avenging themselves on the great. Edmund White

Great People Judgment Most Forms Little Themselves Little People Biography

In the case of my book, I don't think it's really the coming-out gay novel that everyone really needed, even though it was received as such. The boy is too creepy, he betrays his teacher, the only adult man with whom he's enjoyed a sexual experience, etc. Edmund White

Teacher Gay Man Experience Book Think Too Everyone Though Sexual Case Betrays Only Adult He Boy His Etc Really Even Novel Whom Enjoyed Received Needed Creepy

Of course the success of A Boy's Own Story took me utterly off guard. Edmund White

Success Me Own Guard Took Course Boy Off Story Utterly

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