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I stay in one room, and it's easier to live there, to control it, to make it warm. It seems to me a convenient way to live, and it's cheap.
Quentin Crisp -
In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast.
Quentin Crisp
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As someone remarked, when told the new atomic bombs would explode without a bang, 'they can’t leave anything alone.'
Quentin Crisp -
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.'
Quentin Crisp -
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.
Quentin Crisp -
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.
Quentin Crisp -
God, from whose territory I had withdrawn my ambassadors at the age of fourteen.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.
Quentin Crisp -
In Manhattan, every flat surface is a potential stage and every inattentive waiter an unemployed, possibly unemployable, actor.
Quentin Crisp
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I have come to think that both sex and politics are a mistake and that any attempt to establish a connection between the two is the greatest error of all.
Quentin Crisp -
The rest of the world in which I lived was still stumbling about in search of a weapon with which to exterminate this monster homosexuality whose shape and size were not yet known or even guessed at. It was thought to be Greek in origin, smaller than socialism but more deadly, especially to children.
Quentin Crisp -
The worst part of being gay in the twentieth century is all that damn disco music to which one has to listen.
Quentin Crisp -
The distinction between indoors and outdoors, which in England is usually so marked, was temporarily suspended in a hot gauzy haze.
Quentin Crisp -
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.
Quentin Crisp -
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.
Quentin Crisp
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I acquiesced in this on the grounds that the most anyone can expect from a holiday is a change of agony.
Quentin Crisp -
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!
Quentin Crisp -
The proprietor had hair so red that pigmentation had flowed out into every visible inch of his skin and even into the pinks of his eyes, as the colour of flowering cherry trees stains their leaves.
Quentin Crisp -
Even hooligans marry, though they know that marriage is for a little while. It is alimony that is for ever.
Quentin Crisp -
I am told that you regret not what you did but what you didn't do; and so that's why I do everything, so as not to have any regrets.
Quentin Crisp -
A pinch of notoriety will do.
Quentin Crisp
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The happiest moments in any affair take place after the loved one has learned to accommodate the lover and before the maddening personality of either party has emerged like a jagged rock from the receding tides of lust and curiosity.
Quentin Crisp -
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.
Quentin Crisp -
In England, the system is benign and the people are hostile. In America, the people are friendlyand the system is brutal!
Quentin Crisp -
As we all know from witnessing the consuming jealousy of husbands who are never faithful, people do not confine themselves to the emotions to which they are entitled.
Quentin Crisp