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 CRISPIt’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.
More Quentin Crisp Quotes
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In England, nobody’s your friend.
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My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.
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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.
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It is explained that all relationships require a little give and take. This is untrue. Any partnership demands that we give and give and give and at the last, as we flop into our graves exhausted, we are told that we didn’t give enough.
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To lose is not always failure.
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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.
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I’ve never not been famous.
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Is not the whole world a vast house of assignation of which the filing system has been lost?
QUENTIN CRISP -
Never sweep. After four years the dirt gets no worse.
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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!”
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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?”
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Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses.
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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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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.
QUENTIN CRISP