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 WhiteIve always seen writing as a way of telling the truth. For me, writing is about truth. I have always tried to be faithful to my own experience.
Edmund WhiteI saw literature as a fantasy, no less absorbing for all its irrelevance - a parallel life, as dreams shadow waking but never intersect it.
Edmund WhiteWhen we are young... we often experience things in the present with a nostalgia-in-advance, but we seldom guess what we will truly prize years from now.
Edmund WhiteBiography can be the most middle-class of all forms, the judgment of little people avenging themselves on the great.
Edmund WhiteThere 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