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 CRISPIf I were God – and I never understand why I’m not – I should say, “Shop around, I don’t think you’ll find a better bargain than here.”
More Quentin Crisp Quotes
-
-
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 -
What would you be like if you were the only person in the world? If you want to be truly happy you must be that person.
QUENTIN CRISP -
The trouble with European cities is that they are drenched in their history, almost all of which is terrible.
QUENTIN CRISP -
What my parents thought of this, I don’t know. But they bore it. And the real problem was not my sin, but my unemployability.
QUENTIN CRISP -
Sex is the last refuge of the miserable.
QUENTIN CRISP -
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!”
QUENTIN CRISP -
The flagrantly gay Quentin Crisp dealt with homophobic bullying by refusing to bow to its onslaught. His number listed in the phone directory, he responded to derogatory remarks accompanied with a stated intent to kill him by asking, “Would you like to make an appointment?”
QUENTIN CRISP -
In England, nobody’s your friend.
QUENTIN CRISP -
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.
QUENTIN CRISP -
I never saw Portsmouth by day.
QUENTIN CRISP -
The world now seems a stunningly ignoble place. It has not really grown all that much worse but appears to have done so because we know so much more about it than we did.
QUENTIN CRISP -
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.
QUENTIN CRISP -
I don’t really act. I say the words the way I would say them if I meant them.
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 -
The English think that incompetence is the same thing as sincerity.
QUENTIN CRISP






