My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.
QUENTIN CRISPKeeping 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.
More Quentin Crisp Quotes
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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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If you don’t stay in some days, you can’t recharge your batteries.
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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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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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Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.
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I take it to be axiomatic that people are revolted by witnessing the shameless gratification of an appetite they do not share.
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The trouble with children is that they’re not returnable.
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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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I don’t think you can really be proud of being gay because it isn’t something you’ve done. You can only be proud of not being ashamed.
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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.
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Manners are a way of getting what you want without appearing to be an absolute swine.
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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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Manners are love in a cool climate.
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To love another person you have to undertake some fragment of their destiny.
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When asked, ‘Shall I tell my mother I’m gay?’, I reply, ‘Never tell your mother anything.
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You will survive if you believe in yourself.
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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.
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Abatement in the hostility of one’s enemies must never be thought to signify they have been won over. It only means that one has ceased to constitute a threat.
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And were then to lay his own garden path diagonally from one corner to the other, that man’s soul would be lost. Originality is only to be praised when not prefaced by the look to right and left.
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You can’t be a person and a lady. If you’re a person, you can open the damned door yourself.
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An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last installment missing.
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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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It’s no good running a pig farm badly for 30 years while saying, ‘Really, I was meant to be a ballet dancer.’ By then, pigs will be your style.
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The English think that incompetence is the same thing as sincerity.
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Health consists of having the same diseases as one’s neighbors.
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I’ve never not been famous.
QUENTIN CRISP