I am, I must confess, suspicious of those who denounce others for having "too much" sex. At what point does a "healthy" amount become "too much"? The… - Edmund White

Kevin's parents had bumped me from my upstairs room, The place where last weak i had read Death In Venice and luxuriated in the tale of a dignified grown-up who died for the love of an indifferent boy my age. That was the sort of power i wanted over a man. And i awakened to the idea that a great world existed in which things happened and people changed, took risks-more, took notice: a world so sensitive, like a grand piano, that even a step or a word could awaken vibrations in its taught strings.

Many French people were difficult conversationalists. Asking them not only where they were originally from but what they did in life was considered rude — I suppose because many of them did nothing (many Parisians are rentiers, people who live off the rents of their properties) or because they weren’t proud of their jobs, which simultaneously supported and interfered with their intellectual and artistic passions.

He's scattered, his sentences trail off, he sighs frequently, as though he's so intelligent he's always frustrated by the formulaic nature of speech (each sentence a ride you can't get off once the attendant buckles you into the car).