Quentin Crisp Quotes
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Posing was the first job I did in which I understood what I was doing.
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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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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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However low a man sinks he never reaches the level of the police.
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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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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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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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God, from whose territory I had withdrawn my ambassadors at the age of fourteen.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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No effort is required to define or even attain happiness, but enormous concentration is needed to abandon everything else.
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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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In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast.
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Sex is the last refuge of the miserable.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Keeping up with the Joneses was a full-time job with my mother and father. It was not until many years later when I lived alone that I realized how much cheaper it was to drag the Joneses down to my level.
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The programs constantly repeat themselves and one another. No one has yet had the nerve to say, 'As we have nothing sensible to tell you between now and 8:30, please tune in again then.
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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!
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You should make no effort to try to join society, stay right where you are. Give your name and serial number and wait for society to come to you.