I didn't get anything published until I was thirty-three, and yet I'd written five novels and six or seven plays. The plays, I should point out, were dreadful. Edmund White More Quotes by Edmund White More Quotes From Edmund White The almost Oriental politeness of the West Coast is one of its distinctive regional features, in marked contrast to the contentiousness of the East Coast.... So few human contacts in Los Angeles go unmediated by glass (either a TV screen or an automobile windshield), that the direct confrontation renders the participants docile, stunned, sweet. Edmund White glasses west sweet San Francisco is where gay fantasies come true, and the problem the city presents is whether, after all, we wanted these particular dreams to be fulfilled--or would we have preferred others? Did we know what price these dreams would exact? Did we anticipate the ways in which, vivid and continuous, they would unsuit us for the business of daily life? Or should our notion of daily life itself be transformed? Edmund White gay cities dream The scorn directed against drags is especially virulent; they have become the outcasts of gay life, the "queers" of homosexuality.In fact, they are classic scapegoats. Our old fears about our sissiness, still with us though masked by the new macho fascism, are now located, isolated, quarantined through our persecution of the transvestite. Edmund White classic gay facts Sharona Muir has written a gripping personal memoir about her odyssey to rediscover and reclaim her father. Along the way she uncovers some hard truths about the heroic founders of Israel and the Beginnings of Israeli science. The Book of Telling keeps in all the fears and resentments and consolations and warmth of such a process-at once her own story and the tale of a nation. Edmund White israel father book I still feel that sincerity and realism are avant-garde, or can be, just as I did when I started out. Edmund White realism avant-garde sincerity There is an enormous pressure placed on gay novelists because they are the only spokespeople. The novelist's first obligation is to be true to his own vision, not to be some sort of common denominator or public relations man to all gay people. Edmund White gay men people Recognizing that the world is governed by a minority, the sexually active, and that they hold sway of a huge majority of the nonsexual, those people too young or too old or too poor or too homely or sick or crazy or powerless to be able to afford sexual partners (or the luxury of systematic, sustained and shared introspection, so sexual in its own way). All advertisements and films and songs are addressed to sexuals, to their rash whims and finicky tastes. Edmund White luxury crazy song For most Northerners, Texas is the home of real men. The cowboys, the rednecks, the outspoken self-made right-wing millionaires strike us as either the best or worst examples of American manliness.... The ideal is not an illusion nor is it contemptible, no matter what damage it may have done. Many people who scorn it in conversation want to submit to it in bed. Those who believe machismo reeks of violence alone choose to forget it once stood for honor as well. Edmund White real home believe 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 beautiful-woman woman beautiful love Key West is the place where your sickly house plant back in New York grows to 10 ft. It's also the place where an 8-ft. cactus, the century plant, produces a huge yellow flower every great once in a while, like a robot proffering a bouquet. After the plant flowers, it dies. Edmund White flowers great flower yellow The one thing that is sort of sneered at and not really believed is bisexuality. Any bisexual man is just seen as a closeted gay man. That shows how narrow-minded people are. The other thing that's totally neglected and which nobody approves of is celibacy. People again assume that you're just repressing something. Edmund White you man gay people 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 eyes myself business world '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 will beginning know solitude In a memoir, your main contract with the reader is to tell the truth, no matter how bizarre. Edmund White your tell truth matter I was too prissy, too refined, too abstemious, too French to be a good American writer. Edmund White writer too american good 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 bad flaws life fall Sometimes Peggy herself would sell tickets to her museum, and if tourists asked her if Mrs. Guggenheim was still alive, she'd assure them she wasn't. Edmund White museum she alive sometimes 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 immigrant new group new-york Just like Barack Obama, my views on gay marriage have evolved, and now I am a reluctant groom. Edmund White i-am like marriage gay The first version of The Beautiful Room Is Empty was the first mss. I'd ever submitted to New York editors. Edmund White room new new-york beautiful
