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?’
QUENTIN CRISPThere 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.
More Quentin Crisp Quotes
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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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I never understood music. It seemed to me to be the maximum amount of noise conveying the minimum amount of information.
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The British do not expect happiness. I had the impression, all the time that I lived there, that they do not want to be happy; they want to be right.
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As we all know from witnessing the consuming jealousy of husbands who are never faithful, people do not confine themselves to the emotions to which they are entitled.
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I’ve never not been famous.
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You don’t have to deal with anyone in America. They accept you the way you are.
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Exhibitionism is like a drug. Hooked in adolescence I was now taking doses so massive they would have killed a novice.
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People say to me, “When did you come out?” But I was never in! When I was about six, I was swanning around the house in clothes that belonged to my mother and my grandmother which I’d found in an attic, saying, “I am a beautiful princess!”
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Politics are not an instrument for effecting social change; they are the art of making the inevitable appear to be a matter of wise human choice.
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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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Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses.
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To love another person you have to undertake some fragment of their destiny.
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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.
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The trouble with children is that they’re not returnable.
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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