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.
QUENTIN CRISPI like living in one room and have never known what people do with the room they are not in.
More Quentin Crisp Quotes
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Vice is its own reward.
QUENTIN CRISP -
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.
QUENTIN CRISP -
You don’t have to deal with anyone in America. They accept you the way you are.
QUENTIN CRISP -
Never get involved with someone who wants to change you
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 -
In Manhattan, every flat surface is a potential stage and every inattentive waiter an unemployed, possibly unemployable, actor.
QUENTIN CRISP -
Nothing in our culture, not even home computers, is more overrated than the epidermal felicity of two featherless bipeds in desperate congress.
QUENTIN CRISP -
Our clothes are too much a part of us for most of us ever to be entirely indifferent to their condition: it is as though the fabric were indeed a natural extension of the body, or even of the soul.
QUENTIN CRISP -
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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Women have decided to be people, which is a great mistake. Women were nicer than people.
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Nothing shortens a journey so pleasantly as an account of misfortunes at which the hearer is permitted to laugh.
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 -
I take it to be axiomatic that people are revolted by witnessing the shameless gratification of an appetite they do not share.
QUENTIN CRISP -
Masturbation is not only an expression of self-regard: it is also the natural emotional outlet of those who…have already accepted as inevitable the wide gulf between their real futures and the expectations of their fantasies.
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It’s a strange situation, but people will pay your fare to get you to go and tell them how to be happy.
QUENTIN CRISP






