“I thought that to write of my own experiences would require a translation out of the crude patois of actual slow suffering – mean, scattered thoughts and transfusion-slow boredom – into the tidy couplets of brisk, beautiful sentiment, a way of at once elevating and lending momentum to what I felt.”

“I thought that to write of my own experiences would require a translation out of the crude patois of actual slow suffering – mean, scattered thoughts and transfusion-slow boredom – into the tidy couplets of brisk, beautiful sentiment, a way of at once elevating and lending momentum to what I felt.”

— Edmund White