There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; the second that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can’t think what to do with the long winter evenings.
QUENTIN CRISPDevelopment of character consists solely in moving toward self-sufficiency.
More Quentin Crisp Quotes
-
-
You don’t have to deal with anyone in America. They accept you the way you are.
QUENTIN CRISP -
Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.
QUENTIN CRISP -
There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn’t get any worse.
QUENTIN CRISP -
Women have decided to be people, which is a great mistake. Women were nicer than people.
QUENTIN CRISP -
Sex is the last refuge of the miserable.
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 -
Development of character consists solely in moving toward self-sufficiency.
QUENTIN CRISP -
Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses.
QUENTIN CRISP -
Nothing in our culture, not even home computers, is more overrated than the epidermal felicity of two featherless bipeds in desperate congress.
QUENTIN CRISP -
People are not heterosexual or homosexual, just sexual.
QUENTIN CRISP -
The gymnasiacs of Venice, in California, are so addicted to these practices that there has arisen a nation of men who can no longer put their arms against their sides
QUENTIN CRISP -
Fashion is not style. Nay, we can say more: Fashion is instead of style. Style is an idiom springing spontaneously from the personality but deliberately maintained.
QUENTIN CRISP -
An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last installment missing.
QUENTIN CRISP -
If I have any talent at all, it is not for doing but for being.
QUENTIN CRISP -
Well, it has done terrifying things. Religious ideas are inflammatory in a way that I find difficult to understand. There are very few wars over the theory of relativity. Very few heated arguments, for that matter. Whereas, in Northern Ireland, they are killing one another over religion.
QUENTIN CRISP -
The … problem that confronts homosexuals is that they set out to win the love of a “real” man. If they succeed, they fail. A man who “goes with” other men is not what they would call a real man. The conundrum is incapable of resolution, but that does not make homosexuals give it up.
QUENTIN CRISP -
The search for a life-style involves a journey to the interior. This is not altogether a pleasant experience, because you not only have to take stock of what you consider your assets but you also have to take a long look at what your friends call “the trouble with you.” Nevertheless, the journey is worth making.
QUENTIN CRISP -
In Manhattan, every flat surface is a potential stage and every inattentive waiter an unemployed, possibly unemployable, actor.
QUENTIN CRISP -
He knew them only ‘in Braille’ – the curtains were never drawn back in the rooms in Oxford where he met those boys. It was the most sordid life you can imagine. And he was bleating about love and dragging the fair name of Mr. Plato into the trial – after a life like that?
QUENTIN CRISP -
I never understood music. It seemed to me to be the maximum amount of noise conveying the minimum amount of information.
QUENTIN CRISP -
Exhibitionism is like a drug. Hooked in adolescence I was now taking doses so massive they would have killed a novice.
QUENTIN CRISP -
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 -
In England, the system is benign and the people are hostile. In America, the people are friendlyand the system is brutal!
QUENTIN CRISP -
Health consists of having the same diseases as one’s neighbors.
QUENTIN CRISP -
If you don’t stay in some days, you can’t recharge your batteries.
QUENTIN CRISP -
Quentin Crisp (to handsome young man on the street): “What’s the matter, sexy? Don’t you like dehydrated fruit?
QUENTIN CRISP