In Manhattan, every flat surface is a potential stage and every inattentive waiter an unemployed, possibly unemployable, actor.
QUENTIN CRISPThough intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses.
More Quentin Crisp Quotes
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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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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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Quentin Crisp (to handsome young man on the street): “What’s the matter, sexy? Don’t you like dehydrated fruit?
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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.
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Because it is in the nature of things that they become extreme, we have passed down from manliness to cruelty. If I had been told when I was 20 that there was a tavern in the town where the brave and the cruel were gathered together,
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You must stop this interview now as I have come to end of my personality.
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The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to plant their whole life in the hands of some other person. I would describe this method of searching for happiness as immature. Development of character consists solely in moving toward self-sufficiency.
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When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, ‘Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don’t believe?’
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The poverty from which I have suffered could be diagnosed as ‘Soho’ poverty. It comes from having the airs and graces of a genius and no talent.
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Nothing shortens a journey so pleasantly as an account of misfortunes at which the hearer is permitted to laugh.
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Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.
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I don’t like peas, and I’m glad I don’t like them, because if I liked them I would eat them and I hate them.
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I never say ‘No’ to anything.
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If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your style.
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There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn’t get any worse.
QUENTIN CRISP






