The English think that incompetence is the same thing as sincerity.
QUENTIN CRISPThe English think that incompetence is the same thing as sincerity.
QUENTIN CRISPVice is its own reward.
QUENTIN CRISPWhile I have very little to say in favor of sex (it’s vastly overrated, it’s frequently unnecessary, and it’s messy), it is greatly to be preferred to the interminable torments of romantic agony through which two people tear one another limb from limb while professing altruistic devotion.
QUENTIN CRISPThe trouble with European cities is that they are drenched in their history, almost all of which is terrible.
QUENTIN CRISPDevelopment of character consists solely in moving toward self-sufficiency.
QUENTIN CRISPAnd 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.
QUENTIN CRISPIf I have any talent at all, it is not for doing but for being.
QUENTIN CRISPHe knew them only ‘in Braille’ – the curtains were never drawn back in the rooms in Oxford where he met those boys. It was the most sordid life you can imagine. And he was bleating about love and dragging the fair name of Mr. Plato into the trial – after a life like that?
QUENTIN CRISPIf you don’t stay in some days, you can’t recharge your batteries.
QUENTIN CRISPThe worst part of being gay in the twentieth century is all that damn disco music to which one has to listen.
QUENTIN CRISPExhibitionism is like a drug. Hooked in adolescence I was now taking doses so massive they would have killed a novice.
QUENTIN CRISPIn Manhattan, every flat surface is a potential stage and every inattentive waiter an unemployed, possibly unemployable, actor.
QUENTIN CRISPThe 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.
QUENTIN CRISPTo lose is not always failure.
QUENTIN CRISPThe 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.
QUENTIN CRISPAsk yourself, if there was to be no blame, and if there was to be no praise, who would I be then?
QUENTIN CRISP