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.
QUENTIN CRISPDevelopment of character consists solely in moving toward self-sufficiency.
More Quentin Crisp Quotes
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If you describe things as better than they are, you are considered to be a romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you will be called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you will be thought of as a satirist.
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 -
I simply haven’t the nerve to imagine a being, a force, a cause which keeps the planets revolving in their orbits and then suddenly stops in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds.
QUENTIN CRISP -
You must stop this interview now as I have come to end of my personality.
QUENTIN CRISP -
I was amazed to receive later a substantial sum for sitting in my room and talking about myself. If only I could get some of the back pay!
QUENTIN CRISP -
The trouble with European cities is that they are drenched in their history, almost all of which is terrible.
QUENTIN CRISP -
No effort is required to define or even attain happiness, but enormous concentration is needed to abandon everything else.
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 -
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 -
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.
QUENTIN CRISP -
A fair share of anything is starvation diet to an egomaniac.
QUENTIN CRISP -
I don’t really act. I say the words the way I would say them if I meant them.
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.
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Happiness is the only thing I understand.
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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.
QUENTIN CRISP






