Edmund White Quotes

It's true that I've never had a burning desire to rebel against my parents.

I would have gone home to my mother, but I'm not that crazy about my mother.

Writing about your family is the hardest thing, unless you had the perfect happy family life, which very few of us have had.

I had a very, very difficult relationship with my mother, who was supremely self-centred. She was hilariously self-centred. She did not really take interest in anything that didn't immediately affect her.

My dad was a terrible father. Dreadful. But he had a very difficult childhood. He was fostered - he never knew who his father was. So he had a very different attitude to family and kids. I don't have any issues. I'm not suffering some secret angst.

My father was often angry when I was most like him.

I like my parents but they are just not good parents. They are nice enough people. I'm not interested in hurting their feelings.

My father was this famous heart surgeon, a wonderful man... but there was something about me that drove him crazy.

I'm working on my relationship with my mother and father, but my upbringing has been very destructive.

I come from a dysfunctional family, so my views of parents and parenting used to be highly mixed.

Families, generally, suck. And I say that as someone who, like my husband, had parents who proved the proverbial exception to the rule.

I don't know that it exists, the perfect family. It's always complicated.

There will be no 'Mommie Dearest' in the lives of my children, and no books like the one the Crosby boy wrote about Bing, or Bette Davis's daughter has written. My children love me very much, and they are loved.

'East of Eden' is an important story for me. It's about a kid that's misunderstood and feels like he's not loved by his father. It's a very father-son kind of story, and it's not until the end that they sort of make up. I like that because every boy has trouble with his father, so it's very relatable.

My mother was like a sister to me, only we didn't have sex quite so often.

I don't have anything against my mom, but my family has no emotional connection to each other.

Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

When you have parents who are a little out of their minds, somebody has to take responsibility.

Everyone has bits of dysfunction in their families, but I actually have a very nice, happy one.

'Like Father, Like Son' gave me the opportunity to show when it is not good with a father.

Family politics are worse than world politics. That's all I can say. You don't get to choose your family; you get to choose your friends. Your family is imposed upon you.

It's no secret that I have, at best, a strained and awkward relationship with my dad. The Wasserman family - my mom, my sister, Lew and Edie - raised me. They are the people I define as my family.

I love my mum and dad, but they were shocking providers and carers.

I was thinking about it: so many of my stories are about my family life, not about being related to a lot of famous people. That's my grandma, that's my mama, my daddy, my aunt, my uncle, my stepdaddy. I'd probably tell them even if they weren't well known.

Most families are dysfunctional.