Edmund White

As a young teenager I looked desperately for things to read that might excuse me or assure me I wasn't the only one, that might confirm an identity I was unhappily piecing together. ↗

— Edmund White

#confirm #desperately #excuse #i #identity

Biography can be the most middle-class of all forms, the judgment of little people avenging themselves on the great. ↗

— Edmund White

#biography #forms #great #judgment #little

I didn't want to write a biographie romancee especially since I already write novels, nor did I want to challenge the rules of the biography game, arbitrary as those rules might be. ↗

— Edmund White

#arbitrary #biography #challenge #did #especially

I think sincerity was my sole aesthetic and realism my experimental technique. ↗

— Edmund White

#experimental #i #i think #realism #sincerity

I think that there are empty ecological niches in the literary landscape crying to be filled and when a book more or less fills a niche it's seized on, even when it's a far from perfect fit. ↗

— Edmund White

#crying #ecological #empty #even #far

If I take a less defensive tone, I'd admit that I couldn't write today a very jazzy, contemporary look at America as I did in 1979 in States of Desire. ↗

— Edmund White

#america #contemporary #defensive #desire #did

Of course the success of A Boy's Own Story took me utterly off guard. ↗

— Edmund White

#course #guard #me #off #own

The first version of The Beautiful Room Is Empty was the first mss. I'd ever submitted to New York editors. ↗

— Edmund White

#editors #empty #ever #first #i

These rejections hurt me terribly because I felt it was my life that was being rejected. ↗

— Edmund White

#being #felt #hurt #i #life