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Top 70 Edmund White Quotes (2025 Update)
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Edmund White Quote: “When I grew up I would always be frank, loving and generous.”

51. “When I grew up I would always be frank, loving and generous.”

— Edmund White

Edmund White Quote: “I like to read great books not because I’m hoping to imitate them but because I want to remind myself how good you have to be to be any good at all. We won’t be read in the light of other writers in our zip code or decade but as we compare to Proust, Joyce, and Nabokov. History has set the bar very high, and one must jump over it, not do the limbo under it.”

52. “I like to read great books not because I’m hoping to imitate them but because I want to remind myself how good you have to be to be any good at all. We won’t be read in the light of other writers in our zip code or decade but as we compare to Proust, Joyce, and Nabokov. History has set the bar very high, and one must jump over it, not do the limbo under it.”

— Edmund White

Edmund White Quote: “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.”

53. “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

Edmund White Quote: “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.”

54. “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

Edmund White Quote: “Marie Calloway has a very specific literary personality that the reader is intrigued by: she’s masochistic, loves to experiment, is quickly bored and intermittently self-hating, very hip, rebellious. Figuring her out is a gripping adventure.”

55. “Marie Calloway has a very specific literary personality that the reader is intrigued by: she’s masochistic, loves to experiment, is quickly bored and intermittently self-hating, very hip, rebellious. Figuring her out is a gripping adventure.”

— Edmund White

Edmund White Quote: “Nothing I did or said among the other boys came to me naturally. As a result, in every encounter, even the most glancing, I had to be a performer, for at all times I was aware I was impersonating a human being.”

56. “Nothing I did or said among the other boys came to me naturally. As a result, in every encounter, even the most glancing, I had to be a performer, for at all times I was aware I was impersonating a human being.”

— Edmund White

Edmund White Quote: “I still feel like a young girl, as though everything is about to happen.”

57. “I still feel like a young girl, as though everything is about to happen.”

— Edmund White

Edmund White Quote: “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...”

58. “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

Edmund White Quote: “I still feel that sincerity and realism are avant-garde, or can be, just as I did when I started out.”

59. “I still feel that sincerity and realism are avant-garde, or can be, just as I did when I started out.”

— Edmund White

Edmund White Quote: “As you can hear, it’s difficult to learn another language after forty.”

60. “As you can hear, it’s difficult to learn another language after forty.”

— Edmund White

Edmund White Quote: “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.”

61. “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

Edmund White Quote: “Had he already inspired a passion in some stranger’s heart?”

62. “Had he already inspired a passion in some stranger’s heart?”

— Edmund White

Edmund White Quote: “Gay life is this object out there that’s waiting to be written about. A lot of people think we’ve exhausted all the themes of gay fiction, but we’ve just barely touched on them.”

63. “Gay life is this object out there that’s waiting to be written about. A lot of people think we’ve exhausted all the themes of gay fiction, but we’ve just barely touched on them.”

— Edmund White

Edmund White Quote: “This isn’t a banana republic. You can’t pull strings in America, pay off an official, lean on your cousin. It’s not like France or Spain – those banana republics.”

64. “This isn’t a banana republic. You can’t pull strings in America, pay off an official, lean on your cousin. It’s not like France or Spain – those banana republics.”

— Edmund White

Edmund White Quote: “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.”

65. “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

Edmund White Quote: “So many novelists of our time eschew any “message,” as if it’s an aesthetic flaw. Maybe critics want to preserve our self-defeatingly clamorous culture by making sure no radical idea actually gets through and can be heard.”

66. “So many novelists of our time eschew any “message,” as if it’s an aesthetic flaw. Maybe critics want to preserve our self-defeatingly clamorous culture by making sure no radical idea actually gets through and can be heard.”

— Edmund White

Edmund White Quote: “Later I would know some real workers – heavily tattooed, hair worn in ponytails, motorcycle-riding, manga-reading, and pill-popping – and I realized they were as batty as we were, far from the standardized robots of our fantasies. Americans, rich or poor, were a nation of weirdos.”

67. “Later I would know some real workers – heavily tattooed, hair worn in ponytails, motorcycle-riding, manga-reading, and pill-popping – and I realized they were as batty as we were, far from the standardized robots of our fantasies. Americans, rich or poor, were a nation of weirdos.”

— Edmund White

Edmund White Quote: “America was, alas, a country of great eccentrics and great prudes, of great writers and few readers.”

68. “America was, alas, a country of great eccentrics and great prudes, of great writers and few readers.”

— Edmund White

Edmund White Quote: “Stendhal had said a Frenchman was an Italian in a bad mood.”

69. “Stendhal had said a Frenchman was an Italian in a bad mood.”

— Edmund White

Edmund White Quote: “Kevin was restless; he belly-flopped into the water, spraying me, stood, turned and scudded more water at me with the heel of his hand. I knew I should shout ″Geronimo!″ and leap in after him, clamber up on his back and push him under. The horseplay would dissolve the tension and sexual melancholy; my body would become not a snare but a friendly sort of weapon.”

70. “Kevin was restless; he belly-flopped into the water, spraying me, stood, turned and scudded more water at me with the heel of his hand. I knew I should shout ″Geronimo!″ and leap in after him, clamber up on his back and push him under. The horseplay would dissolve the tension and sexual melancholy; my body would become not a snare but a friendly sort of weapon.”

— Edmund White

Edmund White Quote: “What I had instead was the ache of waiting and the fear I wasn’t worthy.”

71. “What I had instead was the ache of waiting and the fear I wasn’t worthy.”

— Edmund White

Edmund White Quote: “I think he had no notion how little an effect the word sin had on me. He might as well have said, “Homosexuality is bad juju.”

72. “I think he had no notion how little an effect the word sin had on me. He might as well have said, “Homosexuality is bad juju.”

— Edmund White

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