Edmund White Quotes

"Sometimes I have the feeling that we're in one room with two opposite doors and each of us holds the handle of one door, one of us flicks an eyelash and the other is already behind his door, and now the first one has but to utter a word ad immediately the second one has closed his door behind him and can no longer be seen. He's sure to open the door again for it's a room which perhaps one cannot leave. If only the first one were not precisely like the second, if he were calm, if he would only pretend not to look at the other, if he slowly set the room in order as though it were a room like any other; but instead he does exactly the same as the other at his door, sometimes even both are behind the doors and the the beautiful room is empty." Franz Kafka (in a letter to Milena Jesenska)

That’s one of the problems — and joys — of old age: every time you read a book it’s the first.

There was no way to defend what I was. All I could fight for was my right to choose my exile, my destruction.

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

You say that you don’t care about age and that you’re ready to push the wheelchair and hose down my bum, but how can you be sure?

In America everyone called the merest acquaintance a ‘friend’ – Guy had taken up the habit. It made him feel better about not having any real friends.

He was taking Kevin’s cherry! The words made him harder and made him feel privileged, masterful, married. He thought how many men would pay unlimited amounts to have this inaugurating experience with this boy. He didn’t want to feel like a middle-aged paedophile, he didn’t even want to think all this would make a good porn film. He wanted every thrust, every second, to be laden with tenderness, a salute from him to Kevin, a deep recognition. He wanted Kevin to like what was being done to him, to push back for another joyous millimetre of penetration. He didn’t want him to label it Guy’s First Fuck or Kevin’s First Time. He didn’t want the idea and the label to crowd out the sensation or to sharpen it; he wanted it to be pure sex, undramatised.

There was something stubborn in me that didn't want to lose weight to attract a man. If the right man came along, he'd be able to see my virtues magically. Once he kissed me, the frog would turn into a prince. I had become a trick question, a heavy disguise, but behind the disobliging exterior was the welcoming child I would always be. Of course, what I'd forgotten was that he was not Parsifal and I was not the Grail; the medievalism of my imagination was not sufficiently up-to-date to recognize that the lover was a shopper and I a product.

That a life could be changed posited the still more thrilling notion that one had a thing called a life, a wonderful being that was growing silently inside like an infant.

America was the attic of French culture.

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

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

I could certainly subscribe to the notion that life ends in old age, sickness, and death — but later, later.

In return for ten minutes of pleasure they design the rest of the day.

He was a good boy and ‘projected’ goodness – which later would be the downfall of many a person.