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 CRISPThe trouble with European cities is that they are drenched in their history, almost all of which is terrible.
More Quentin Crisp Quotes
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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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I had a friend who had two degrees of being made up: when invited I would say ‘Can I make up?’ and he would say ‘Oh yes – tinted?’, or he would say, ‘Oh yes – clotted?’
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There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; the second that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can’t think what to do with the long winter evenings.
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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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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.
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For flavor, instant sex will never supersede the stuff you have to peel and cook.
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Look inward and ask not if there is anything outside you want, but whether there is anything inside that you have not yet unpacked.
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I asked a girl who came from America to England, when I was only English, and she admitted she had been to a drama school. And I said, “What did they teach you?” And she said, “They taught me to be a candle burning in an empty room.”
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Assoon as I stepped out of my mother’s womb on to dry land, I realized that I had made a mistake?but the trouble with children is that they are not returnable.
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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!
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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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I never say ‘No’ to anything.
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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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I’ve never not been famous.
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The worst part of being gay in the twentieth century is all that damn disco music to which one has to listen.
QUENTIN CRISP






