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Authors:

Edmund White quotes

American Novelist January 13, 1940

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Quotes

For the real movements of a life are gradual, then sudden; they resist becoming anecdotes, they pulse like quasars from long-dead stars to reach the vivid planet of the present, they drift like fog over the ship until the spread sails are merely panels of gray in grayer air and surround becomes object, as in those perceptual tests where figure and ground reverse, the kissing couple in profile turn into the outlines of the mortuary urn that holds their own ashes. Time wears down resolve--then... Edmund White
In my twenties if even a tenth reading of Mallarm failed to yield up its treasures, the fault was mine, not his. If my eyes swooned shut while I read The Sweet Cheat Gone, Proust’s pacing was never called into question, just my intelligence and dedication and sensitivity. And I still entertain these sacralizing preconceptions about high art. I still admire what is difficult, though I now recognize it as a “period” taste and that my generation was the last to give a damn. Though we were... Edmund White
Edmund White quote: "These rejections hurt me terribly because I felt it was my..."
These rejections hurt me terribly because I felt it was my life that was being rejected. Edmund White
At every moment I convinced myself that I was gathering material for the novel of my life - all experienced from the philosophical distance of the author. Even these humiliating occasions when I was robbed could be used as material. Life was a field trip. Edmund White
Edmund White quote: "The first version of The Beautiful Room Is Empty was the first..."
The first version of The Beautiful Room Is Empty was the first mss. I'd ever submitted to New York editors. Edmund White
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
Edmund White quote: "Of course the success of A Boy's Own Story took me utterly off..."
Of course the success of A Boy's Own Story took me utterly off guard. Edmund White
The French have such an attractive civilization, dedicated to calm pleasures and general tolerance, and their taste in every domain is so sharp, so sure, that the foreigner (especially someone from chaotic, confused America) is quickly seduced into believing that if he can only become a Parisian he will at last master the art of living. Edmund White
I think that there are empty ecological niches in the literary landscape crying to be filled and when a book more or less fills a niche it's seized on, even when it's a far from perfect fit. Edmund White
Whereas fiction is a continual discovery of what one wants to say, what one feels, what one means, and is, in that sense, a performance art, biography requires different skills - research and organization. Edmund White
Edmund White quote: "I'd rather come back with a few transcendent memories than an..."
I'd rather come back with a few transcendent memories than an album of snapshots. Edmund White
Edmund White quote: "I think sincerity was my sole aesthetic and realism my..."
I think sincerity was my sole aesthetic and realism my experimental technique. Edmund White
I'm sorry," Billy says, "but I felt it was too organized. I like ellipses and teeny jottings and spontaneous poems and particularly all those devices like long lists of melancholy things. Edmund White
Edmund White quote: "Suffering does make us more sensitive until it crushes us..."
Suffering does make us more sensitive until it crushes us completely. Edmund White
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... Edmund White

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