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 More Quotes by Edmund White More Quotes From Edmund White Psychoanalysis feeds on intensity, as though life were all flame and no ash. Edmund White intensity ashes flames I'm an atheist, I always thought, 'This is it.' If there is going to be a heaven, it should be on earth. I feel much happier than most people. I'm fairly stoic about death, but I'm not keen on dying if it's going to be long and protracted. I don't have dark nights of the soul, except occasionally. I'm such a little busy bee. Edmund White atheist dark night At certain crucial moments - an emergency or an opportunity - one must act first and think later. Edmund White emergencies opportunity thinking The imagination is not the consolation people pretend. It can even be regarded as the admission of some sort of failure. Edmund White consolation imagination people There was something stubborn in me that didn't want to lose weight to attract a man. If the right man came along, he'd be able to see my virtues magically. Once he kissed me, the frog would turn into a prince. I had become a trick question, a heavy disguise, but behind the disobliging exterior was the welcoming child I would always be. Of course, what I'd forgotten was that he was not Parsifal and I was not the Grail; the medievalism of my imagination was not sufficiently up-to-date to recognize that the lover was a shopper and I a product. Edmund White imagination men children 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 teenager identity together If I take a less defensive tone, I'd admit that I couldn't write today a very jazzy, contemporary look at America as I did in 1979 in States of Desire. Edmund White desire writing america Of course the success of A Boy's Own Story took me utterly off guard. Edmund White stories success boys I didn't want to write a biographie romancee especially since I already write novels, nor did I want to challenge the rules of the biography game, arbitrary as those rules might be Edmund White challenges games writing Being up on something is a way of dismissing it. To espouse any point of view is a danger - it might leave us stuck with last year's cause. Prized for their novelty alone, ideas, gimmicks, trends become equivalent, interchangeable. Edmund White views years ideas What is new about Barthes's posthumous reputation is the view of him as a writer whose books of criticism and personal musings must be admired as serious and beautiful works of the imagination. Edmund White views beautiful book These rejections hurt me terribly because I felt it was my life that was being rejected. Edmund White rejected rejection hurt All his leisure clothes were absurd - jokes, really - as though leisure itself had to be ridiculed. Edmund White leisure absurd clothes Someone once remarked that in adolescence pornography is a substitute for sex, whereas in adulthood sex is a substitute for pornography. Edmund White substitutes cynical sex Energy in itself is a sort of redemption. No wonder we admire Satan. But if the Devil were listless, if he were a pale man in his underwear who watched television by day behind closed venetian blinds - oh if that were the devil I would fear him. Edmund White devil energy men Hell is God's Absence. Edmund White hell absence 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 irrelevance shadow dream The notion that I might have been able to court friends, win attention, conjure it, would have spoiled it for me. Unbidden love was what I wanted. Edmund White winning might attention Dreadful is a poignant biography of a forgotten man who drank himself to death. It's a brilliant evocation of a self-hating gay novelist in the 1940s whom Gore Vidal once considered a rival. Edmund White gay hate men 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