Quentin Crisp Quotes
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The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.
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The worst part of being gay in the twentieth century is all that damn disco music to which one has to listen.
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Posing was the first job I did in which I understood what I was doing.
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God, from whose territory I had withdrawn my ambassadors at the age of fourteen. It had become obvious that he was never going to do a thing I said.
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The world now seems a stunningly ignoble place. It has not really grown all that much worse but appears to have done so because we know so much more about it than we did.
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Sometimes I wore a fringe so deep it obscured the way ahead. This hardly mattered. There were always others to look where I was going.
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The simplest comment on my book came from my ballet teacher. She said, 'I wish you hadn’t made every line funny. It’s so depressing.'
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I take it to be axiomatic that people are revolted by witnessing the shameless gratification of an appetite they do not share.
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In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast.
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Nowadays people don't use face powder; they say it dries the skin. But I makeup in the old-fashioned way.
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However low a man sinks he never reaches the level of the police.
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I am asked how to remain young, and I say 'Never, never work.' And that, of course, is the secret of it.
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I was amazed to receive later a substantial sum for sitting in my room and talking about myself. If only I could get some of the back pay!
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No effort is required to define or even attain happiness, but enormous concentration is needed to abandon everything else.
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Sex is the last refuge of the miserable.
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He explained to me that he wanted a simple boy-meets-girl story with lyrics. This I felt was quite beyond my capabilities. I did not know any boys who met girls.
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Other-cheekism is not only a way of purifying the soul, it is also part of every weak person's survival kit.
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Another friend began to say, 'Well, Quentin has a problem of adjusting himself to society and he...' This sentence was never finished. The ballet teacher expostulated, 'I don't agree. Quentin does exactly as he pleases. The rest of us have to adapt ourselves to him.'
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Nothing more rapidly inclines a person to go into a monastery than reading a book on etiquette. There are so many trivial ways in which it is possible to commit some social sin.
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Many hooligans discover to their shame that they have scruples; they have roots and, greatest disadvantage of all, they have hope. The fathers superior of the order do not try to influence their children in Satan; they merely shake their heads in sorrow. They know that the apostate must work out his own damnation.
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I don't think you can really be proud of being gay because it isn't something you've done. You can only be proud of not being ashamed.
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Every day someone notices me and waves to me, or stops and speaks to me, or asks me for an autograph, or photographs me.
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As a test of the closeness of your relationship with the world, sex could never be a patch on being murdered. (That's when someone really does risk his life for you.)
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In England, the system is benign and the people are hostile. In America, the people are friendlyand the system is brutal!