To love another person you have to undertake some fragment of their destiny.
QUENTIN CRISPSex is the last refuge of the miserable.
More Quentin Crisp Quotes
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He 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?
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Quentin Crisp (to handsome young man on the street): “What’s the matter, sexy? Don’t you like dehydrated fruit?
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I don’t really act. I say the words the way I would say them if I meant them.
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For flavor, instant sex will never supersede the stuff you have to peel and cook.
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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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I never spend my time doing anything I’ll have to do again tomorrow.
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Fashion is what you adopt when you don’t know who you are.
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Our clothes are too much a part of us for most of us ever to be entirely indifferent to their condition: it is as though the fabric were indeed a natural extension of the body, or even of the soul.
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You don’t have to deal with anyone in America. They accept you the way you are.
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A fair share of anything is starvation diet to an egomaniac.
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Men get laid, but women get screwed.
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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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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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Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.
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The measure of woman’s distaste for any part of her life lies not in the loudness of her lamentations (these are only an attempt to buy a martyr’s crown at a reduced price) but in her persistent pursuit of that occupation of which she never ceases to complain.
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I went out into the world when I was about 22. I wrote books and I illustrated books and did book covers, and I taught tap-dancing, and I was a model in the art school. I had no ability for any of those things, but what else could I do?
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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?
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Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave.
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Nothing shortens a journey so pleasantly as an account of misfortunes at which the hearer is permitted to laugh.
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To my disappointment I now realized that to know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.
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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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The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to plant their whole life in the hands of some other person. I would describe this method of searching for happiness as immature. Development of character consists solely in moving toward self-sufficiency.
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The curiosity of the neighbors about you, is a tribute to your individuality, and you should encourage it
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If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your style.
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I would have run all the way and I would have gone up to the largest and leatheriest of the denizens and said: If you truly love me, kill the bartender.
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Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.
QUENTIN CRISP