“Some writers are so enthralled by ideas (one thinks of Doris Lessing) ...” — Edmund White Quote

Some writers are so enthralled by ideas (one thinks of Doris Lessing) that their characters become debaters, and their fables approach allegory.

In a novel, I think you have a contract with the reader to make the character representative - of a moment in history, a social class... for instance, I wanted to make the boy in 'A Boy's Own Story' more like other gay men of my generation in their youth and not like me.

A straight writer can write a gay novel and not worry about it, and a gay novelist can write about straight people.

If bigots oppose gay marriage so vehemently, it must be because marriage is a defining institution for them; gays will never be fully accepted until they can marry and adopt, like anyone else.

If you tell a story that's only allegory, then it doesn't help you at all. If it doesn't bring some emotional charge, then it's just talking about something.

The tree has been always an allegory for spiritual growth.

I dislike Allegory - the conscious and intentional allegory - yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language.

A priest is he who lives solely in the realm of the invisible, for whom all that is visible has only the truth of an allegory.

V is like a mythical situation. It's an allegory for what could happen. V has philosophies within it that actually warn against things like that happening.