“If love means anything at all it means extending your hand to the unlovable.”

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.

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.

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.

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?”

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.

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 (to handsome young man on the street): “What’s the matter, sexy? Don’t you like dehydrated fruit?

In Manhattan, every flat surface is a potential stage and every inattentive waiter an unemployed, possibly unemployable, actor.

Exhibitionism is like a drug. Hooked in adolescence I was now taking doses so massive they would have killed a novice.

No effort is required to define or even attain happiness, but enormous concentration is needed to abandon everything else.

Men get laid, but women get screwed.

I never say ‘No’ to anything.

Ask yourself, if there was to be no blame, and if there was to be no praise, who would I be then?

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.

Women have decided to be people, which is a great mistake. Women were nicer than people.

The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.

Do not be a bodhisattva, do not be an arahant, do not be anything at all. If you are a bodhisattva, you will suffer, if you are an arahant, you will suffer, if you are anything at all, you will suffer.

Of course, there [in China] has to be chaos. It has to be crazy, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong about it except this government, which is really incapable of doing anything meaningful.

Anything which is troubling you, anything which is irritating you, THAT is your teacher.

I don’t have a TV at my house. I literally do not. I have a television, but I don’t have anything plugged into it, though. I watch DVDs.

I’m raising a daughter. I want to be able to say to her, “You can be anything you want. You can be the President of the United States.” I’d love that.

I thought I was gonna be an attorney, so I went to Dartmouth and I was a government major and I minored in environmental policy, and I didn’t do anything academically around the arts.

Sadness doesn’t equal weakness, sweetheart. If anything, it shows the love you have inside of you, and nothing stronger in this world exists.

I also doubt a man can give really clear reasons for anything.