Edmund White Quotes

My function as a writer is not story-telling but truth-telling: to make things plain.

I would prefer to just continue to speak about truth and to speak about what makes sense.

Honesty is more than not lying. It is truth telling, truth speaking, truth living, and truth loving.

If you're going to tell stuff, you might as well tell the real stuff.

If now isn't a good time for the truth I don't see when we'll get to it.

You know I am done lying. Obscuring the truth is no longer something I have any interest in doing. I want it all to come out. The good, the bad, the ugly.

To tell the truth is revolutionary.

I would rather people take me as straightforward and not have to wonder if I'm kidding or not. Because what I have to say, and what I'm interested in doing and communicating, is worthwhile enough that I don't want to muck it up with people being confused about where I'm really coming from.

I realized that I had to be honest about where I was, where I was coming from, and what I was trying to do.

Tell the truth because then you don't have to have a good memory.

It's a lot easier to tell the truth usually.

For truth has such a face and such a mien, as to be loved needs only to be seen.

In order to be transparent, you really have to be completely honest and open, so that's how I've lived my life, and that's where I am now. I am completely transparent. There's nothing that you can't ask me and nothing I won't talk about.

It's important to me to say what I really mean.

It's impossible to always get across what I'm trying to say, but, if I just stay honest, then I'm not going to look back on any of these interviews and wonder what I was trying to do or be.

I came here to tell you the truth, the good, the bad and the ugly.

I will tell the truth wherever I please.

What this means is that we shouldn't abbreviate the truth but rather get a new method of presentation.

Because I'm not trying to throw people any curves.

I prefer doing interviews where people don't have to interpret what you say. I'm going to be real honest.

I always tell what I see.

Well, if I am not vulgar, neither is my book. I wrote myself. Suggestiveness is always vulgar. But truth never. My book is not even remotely suggestive. I call things by their names. That is all.

What you see is what you get.

I enjoy people who aren't afraid to say what they mean. It makes life so much easier!

I felt that it's best just to be as transparent as possible.