“The British do not expect happiness. I had the impression, all the time that I lived there, that they do not want to be happy; they want to be right.”

The more people one has to love, the more one’s capacity to love stretches.

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.

An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last installment missing.

I like living in one room and have never known what people do with the room they are not in.

If you don’t stay in some days, you can’t recharge your batteries.

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.

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.

If people are noticing the hard work I’m doing, then that’s a wonderful thing.

My mother wanted me to be her wings, to fly as she never quite had the courage to do. I love her for that. I love the fact that she wanted to give birth to her own wings.

The most valuable of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it has to be done, whether you like it or not.

Anything I would do, I would have to be me. That is how it would work.

There’s a couple of things you shouldn’t do to other humans and you shouldn’t say to other humans that Khal Drogo does.

I don’t watch a lot of other basketball away from the gym. But I do look at LeBron’s box score. I want to see how many points, rebounds and assists he had, and how he shot from the field.

As beautiful as cinema is, it’s a massive part of the problem of why we look at ourselves in the way we do.

When people are used to you doing something, they want you to stay in that lane.