“For gay men this force of history has been made to come clean; it’s been stripped of its natural look. The very rapidity of change has laid bare the clanking machinery of history. To have been oppressed in the 1950s, freed in the 1960s, exalted in the 1970s and wiped out in the 1980s is a quick itinerary for a whole culture to follow. For we are witnessing not just the death of individuals but a menace to an entire culture. All the more reason to bear witness to the cultural moment.”
Esthetics and Loss, Artforum (1987), printed in in The Burning Library: Writings on Art, Literature and Sexuality 1969-1993, (Picador, London, 1995)
Articles and Interviews
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Edmund White 28
American novelist and LGBT essayist 1940Related quotes

On westernisation, as quoted in " Centre targets 'cultural pollution' http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150908/jsp/frontpage/story_41407.jsp" Calcutta Telegraph (7 September 2015)

“Ancient histories, as one of our wits has said, are but fables that have been agreed upon.”
Toutes les histoires anciennes, comme le disait un de nos beaux esprits, ne sont que des fables convenues.
Jeannot et Colin http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Jeannot_et_Colin (1764)
Citas

“Women in most cultures have been stripped of their spiritual power.”
Interview at Brown's official site http://www.danbrown.com/novels/davinci_code/faqs.html
Context: Two thousand years ago, we lived in a world of Gods and Goddesses. Today, we live in a world solely of Gods. Women in most cultures have been stripped of their spiritual power.

Source: Culture and Anarchy (1869), Ch. I, Sweetness and Light
Context: The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light. He who works for sweetness and light, works to make reason and the will of God prevail. He who works for machinery, he who works for hatred, works only for confusion. Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light.
“From the beginning, this culture - civilization - has been a culture of occupation.”
Vol. 1, pg. XI
Endgame (2006)
Race to Extinction
Focus Fourteen

As quoted in "The Farewell writer-director Lulu Wang on the joys of laughing at human nature" in The Verge (17 July 2019) https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/17/20696611/the-farewell-writer-director-lulu-wang-interview-awkwafina