You don’t have to deal with anyone in America. They accept you the way you are.
QUENTIN CRISPAsk yourself, if there was to be no blame, and if there was to be no praise, who would I be then?
More Quentin Crisp Quotes
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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.
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
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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.
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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 -
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?
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.
QUENTIN CRISP -
Fashion is a way of not having to decide who you are. Style is deciding who you are and being able to perpetuate it.
QUENTIN CRISP -
Manners are love in a cool climate.
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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.”
QUENTIN CRISP -
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.
QUENTIN CRISP -
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 -
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.
QUENTIN CRISP -
Neither look forward where there is doubt nor backward where there is regret.
QUENTIN CRISP -
I like living in one room and have never known what people do with the room they are not in.
QUENTIN CRISP -
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.
QUENTIN CRISP -
Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.
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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 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.
QUENTIN CRISP -
The English think that incompetence is the same thing as sincerity.
QUENTIN CRISP -
Health consists of having the same diseases as one’s neighbors.
QUENTIN CRISP -
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.
QUENTIN CRISP -
Look inward and ask not if there is anything outside you want, but whether there is anything inside that you have not yet unpacked.
QUENTIN CRISP -
Happiness is the only thing I understand.
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 -
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 -
The measure of woman’s distaste for any part of her life lies not in the loudness of her lamentations (these are only an attempt to buy a martyr’s crown at a reduced price) but in her persistent pursuit of that occupation of which she never ceases to complain.
QUENTIN CRISP