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 CRISPLook inward and ask not if there is anything outside you want, but whether there is anything inside that you have not yet unpacked.
More Quentin Crisp Quotes
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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.
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If a man were to look over the fence on one side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his left had laid his garden path round a central lawn; and were to look over the fence on the other side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his right had laid his path down the middle of the lawn.
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The trouble with European cities is that they are drenched in their history, almost all of which is terrible.
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When I was young, we thought that Oscar Wilde was a great nobleman who had thrown his life away for love. Nothing could be less true. He slept with East Enders who were procured for him by Lord Alfred Douglas.
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.”
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It may be true that artists adopt a flamboyant appearance, but it’s also true that people who look funny get stuck with the arts.
QUENTIN CRISP -
Love is the extra effort we make in our dealings with those whom we do not like and once you understand that, you understand all. This idea that love overtakes you is nonsense. This is but a polite manifestation of sex. To love another you have to undertake some fragment of their destiny.
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Never sweep. After four years the dirt gets no worse.
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 -
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?
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To live in the past is to miss today’s opportunities and tomorrow’s blessings.
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Assoon as I stepped out of my mother’s womb on to dry land, I realized that I had made a mistake?but the trouble with children is that they are not returnable.
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To my disappointment I now realized that to know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.
QUENTIN CRISP -
The curiosity of the neighbors about you, is a tribute to your individuality, and you should encourage it
QUENTIN CRISP -
Manners are love in a cool climate.
QUENTIN CRISP






