I don’t really act. I say the words the way I would say them if I meant them.
QUENTIN CRISPLife was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave.
More Quentin Crisp Quotes
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Believe in fate, but lean forward where fate can see you.
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In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast. Those who once inhabited the suburbs of human contempt find that without changing their address they eventually live in the metropolis.
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Keeping up with the Joneses was a full-time job with my mother and father. It was not until many years later when I lived alone that I realized how much cheaper it was to drag the Joneses down to my level.
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As we all know from witnessing the consuming jealousy of husbands who are never faithful, people do not confine themselves to the emotions to which they are entitled.
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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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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.
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It’s no good running a pig farm badly for 30 years while saying, ‘Really, I was meant to be a ballet dancer.’ By then, pigs will be your style.
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If love means anything at all it means extending your hand to the unlovable.
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When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, ‘Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don’t believe?’
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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Vice is its own reward.
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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