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Do we regard language as more public, more ceremonial, than thought? Just as family men condemn the profanity on the stage that they use constantly in conversation, in the same way we may look to written language as an idealization rather than a reflection of ourselves.

— Edmund White States of Desire: Travels in Gay America (1980)

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More quotes by Edmund White

All his leisure clothes were absurd — jokes, really — as though leisure itself had to be ridiculed.

A Boy's Own Story (1982)

Perhaps we'd understood each other too well to be attracted to one another. There were no occlusions in communication, those breaks in understanding that awaken desire.

States of Desire: Travels in Gay America (1980)

The notion that I might have been able to court friends, win attention, conjure it, would have spoiled it for me. Unbidden love was what I wanted.

A Boy's Own Story (1982)

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).

States of Desire: Travels in Gay America (1980)

I still feel that sincerity and realism are avant-garde, or can be, just as I did when I started out.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Edmund White (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.