New York has been the subject of thousands of books. Every immigrant group has had its saga as has every epoch and… — Edmund White Copy Share Image
I was never an assimilationist. I always thought gays had some special mission. — Edmund White Copy Share Image
AIDS had won gays sympathy; they no longer seemed the privileged brats that the general populace had resented in the 1970s. — Edmund White Copy Share Image
I've always been impelled to say the truth. When I was 14, in 1954, I already wrote a gay novel, though I'd… — Edmund White Copy Share Image
In retrospect, we could see that the 1950s had been a reactionary period in America of Eisenhower blandness, of virulent anticommunism, of… — Edmund White Copy Share Image
Europeans forget that one-third of the American people have had a personal conversation with Jesus Christ and that the born-again are not… — Edmund White Copy Share Image
I can remember in the late 1980s and early 1990s how many men with AIDS I saw everywhere in Key West. There… — Edmund White Copy Share Image
Why did mainstream America come to accept marriage equality? Gay leaders had made a convincing case that gay families were like straight… — Edmund White Copy Share Image
Reading the several thousand pages of Christopher Isherwood's complete journals is an instructive corrective to the prissiness of reading fiction. Isherwood had… — Edmund White Copy Share Image
My mother was terribly invasive, all in the name of psychiatric honesty. It was a bad thing in some ways, but I… — Edmund White Copy Share Image
The great triumph of the Sixties was to dramatize just how arbitrary and constructed the seeming normality of the Fifties had been.… — Edmund White Copy Share Image
If I had been straight, I would have been an entirely different person. I would never have turned toward writing with a… — Edmund White Copy Share Image
From my mother I learned just how violent and unquenchable a woman's loneliness can be. She had been sheltered excessively by her… — Edmund White Copy Share Image
When I was a child, I loved 'The Marble Faun' by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The reason I liked it was because it had… — Edmund White Copy Share Image
The Stonewall riots were a key moment for gay people. Throughout modern history, gays had thought of themselves as something like a… — Edmund White Copy Share Image
From an early age, I had the idea that writing was truth-telling. It's on the record. Everybody can see it. Maybe it… — Edmund White Copy Share Image
The culmination of a long struggle was 2013, which could clearly be labeled the Year of the Gay. State after state had… — Edmund White Copy Share Image
The talk shows in the States want celebrities, not authors. In France, it is different; writers are called upon to comment on everything. They… — Edmund White Copy Share
Just like Barack Obama, my views on gay marriage have evolved, and now I am a reluctant groom. — Edmund White Copy Share
In 'A Boy's Own Story' and 'Jack Holmes and His Friend,' my idea was to take someone totally different from my real self and,… — Edmund White Copy Share
Everyone seems agreed that writing about sex is perilous, partly because it threatens to swamp highly individualised characters in a generic, featureless activity (much… — Edmund White Copy Share
'The Sound of Things Falling' may be a page turner, but it's also a deep meditation on fate and death. Even in translation, the… — Edmund White Copy Share
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… — Edmund White Copy Share
First, I was opposed to gay marriage because it seemed like one more way that gays were wanting to assimilate. When I realized the… — Edmund White Copy Share
From my mother I learned just how violent and unquenchable a woman's loneliness can be. She had been sheltered excessively by her husband and… — Edmund White Copy Share
From an early age, I had the idea that writing was truth-telling. It's on the record. Everybody can see it. Maybe it goes back… — Edmund White Copy Share
Since, in the best Southern tradition, I was named Edmund Valentine White III, sometimes when people look up my books on Amazon they find… — Edmund White Copy Share
When I was young, I despised old people. I was provincial and narrow-minded. It's the reason I stayed stupid so long. If you only… — Edmund White Copy Share
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… — Edmund White Copy Share
“In the past, when gays were very flamboyant as drag queens or as leather queens or whatever, that just amused people. And most of… — Edmund White Copy Share
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… — Edmund White Copy Share
While writing 'City Boy,' I relied mainly on my own memories. In particular, I was able to describe the effect of gay liberation on… — Edmund White Copy Share
