Most writers tend to get worse rather than better. I'm determined to be one that gets better.
Edmund WhiteRead
I've always been impelled to say the truth. When I was 14, in 1954, I already wrote a gay novel, though I'd never read one. I felt that life handed me a great subject, gay life, that had scarcely been examined, and I was impelled to record it in all its strange detail.
More from Edmund White
All quotes →I've 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 WhiteRead
In a memoir, your main contract with the reader is to tell the truth, no matter how bizarre.
Edmund WhiteRead
If bigots oppose gay marriage so vehemently, it must be because marriage is a defining institution for them; gays will never be fully accepted until they can marry and adopt, like anyone else.
Edmund WhiteRead
When 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 WhiteRead
I was never an assimilationist. I always thought gays had some special mission.
Edmund WhiteRead