Quentin Crisp Quotes
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Britain cherishes her eccentrics and wisely holds that the function of government is to build a walled garden in which anarchy can flourish.
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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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In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast.
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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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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 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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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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God, from whose territory I had withdrawn my ambassadors at the age of fourteen.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 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.
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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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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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No effort is required to define or even attain happiness, but enormous concentration is needed to abandon everything else.
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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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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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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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Posing was the first job I did in which I understood what I was doing.
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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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Sex is the last refuge of the miserable.
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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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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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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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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.
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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.