Most writers tend to get worse rather than better. I'm determined to be one that gets better.
Edmund WhiteRead
In Paris, AIDS was dismissed as an American phobia until French people started dying; then everyone said, 'Well, you have to die some way or another.' If Americans were hysterical and pragmatic, the French were fatalistic: depressed but determined to keep the party going.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights differing attitudes towards AIDS in America and France, contrasting America’s fear with France’s resignation.
Edmund White's quote reflects on the initial dismissive attitude toward AIDS in France, where it was seen as an American problem until it began to affect the French populace directly. The juxtaposition between American hysteria and French fatalism reveals deep cultural differences in dealing with mortality and public health crises, where the French managed to acknowledge the severity of the illness while maintaining a spirit of enjoyment amidst sadness.
Themes
AidsCultureFatalismLifeDeathAcceptance
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about cultural differences in dealing with health crises.
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
Similar quotes
I think people who become compulsive about fitness or eating right, a lot of the time it's out of fear that they're going to lose control or that they're not good enough, so I think anything done out of fear or motivated by fear is often unhealthy.
Mark MansonRead
Public health is a powerful tool to level that playing field, to bend the arc of our country away from distrust and disparities and back towards equity and justice.
Leana S. WenRead
The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.
William OslerRead
...There's a lot of money in the Western diet. The more you process any food, the more profitable it becomes. The healthcare industry makes more money treating chronic diseases (which account for three quarters of the $2 trillion plus we spend each year on health care in this country) than preventing them.
Michael PollanRead
We will not solve the addiction problem in America if we don't address social connection.
Vivek MurthyRead
The choices you make each day in your diet and lifestyle have a direct influence on how your genetic predisposition is expressed - for better and for worse. You're only as old as your genes, but how your genes are expressed may be modified by exercise, diet and lifestyle choices much more than had previously been believed - and more quickly.
Dean OrnishRead