I never understood music. It seemed to me to be the maximum amount of noise conveying the minimum amount of information.
QUENTIN CRISPI had a friend who had two degrees of being made up: when invited I would say ‘Can I make up?’ and he would say ‘Oh yes – tinted?’, or he would say, ‘Oh yes – clotted?’
More Quentin Crisp Quotes
-
-
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 -
You don’t have to deal with anyone in America. They accept you the way you are.
QUENTIN CRISP -
I recommend limiting one’s involvement in other people’s lives to a pleasantly scant minimum. This may seem too stoical a position in these madly passionate times, but madly passionate people rarely make good on their madly passionate promises.
QUENTIN CRISP -
I asked a girl who came from America to England, when I was only English, and she admitted she had been to a drama school. And I said, “What did they teach you?” And she said, “They taught me to be a candle burning in an empty room.”
QUENTIN CRISP -
The trouble with European cities is that they are drenched in their history, almost all of which is terrible.
QUENTIN CRISP -
To my disappointment I now realized that to know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.
QUENTIN CRISP -
I never say ‘No’ to anything.
QUENTIN CRISP -
In England, nobody’s your friend.
QUENTIN CRISP -
A fair share of anything is starvation diet to an egomaniac.
QUENTIN CRISP -
Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses.
QUENTIN CRISP -
Development of character consists solely in moving toward self-sufficiency.
QUENTIN CRISP -
In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast. Those who once inhabited the suburbs of human contempt find that without changing their address they eventually live in the metropolis.
QUENTIN CRISP -
While I have very little to say in favor of sex (it’s vastly overrated, it’s frequently unnecessary, and it’s messy), it is greatly to be preferred to the interminable torments of romantic agony through which two people tear one another limb from limb while professing altruistic devotion.
QUENTIN CRISP -
I would have run all the way and I would have gone up to the largest and leatheriest of the denizens and said: If you truly love me, kill the bartender.
QUENTIN CRISP -
Of course I lie to people. But I lie altruistically – for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist – but then what isn’t?
QUENTIN CRISP