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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.
Quentin Crisp
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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.
Quentin Crisp
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In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast.
Quentin Crisp
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However low a man sinks he never reaches the level of the police.
Quentin Crisp
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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!
Quentin Crisp
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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
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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.
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
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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.
Quentin Crisp
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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.
Quentin Crisp
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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.
Quentin Crisp
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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!
Quentin Crisp
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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.
Quentin Crisp
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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.
Quentin Crisp
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Sex is the last refuge of the miserable.
Quentin Crisp
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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.
Quentin Crisp
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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.
Quentin Crisp
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Posing was the first job I did in which I understood what I was doing.
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
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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.
Quentin Crisp
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No effort is required to define or even attain happiness, but enormous concentration is needed to abandon everything else.
Quentin Crisp
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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.
Quentin Crisp
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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
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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.
Quentin Crisp
