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 WhiteSomeone once remarked that in adolescence pornography is a substitute for sex, whereas in adulthood sex is a substitute for pornography.
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 WhiteAt certain crucial moments - an emergency or an opportunity - one must act first and think later.
Edmund WhiteThe 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