Quentin Crisp Quotes & Sayings

I lost the love of all the homosexuals in the world by saying that Princess Diana was trash and got what she deserved. She could have been Queen of England - and she was swanning about Paris with Arabs. What disgraceful behavior. Going about saying she wanted to be the queen of hearts. The vulgarity of it is so overpowering. — Quentin Crisp

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

The monasteries of Bohemia demand more of their brotherhood than some are prepared to give. The daily routine of back-breaking idleness proves too much for certain novices. The self-inflicted orgies that are the inevitable punishment for the slightest deviation into the bourgeois way of life are more than their frail flesh can stand. Many discover to their shame that they have scruples; they have roots, and greatest disadvantage of all, they have hope — Quentin Crisp

I never saw Portsmouth by day. — Quentin Crisp

The distinction between indoors and outdoors, which in England is usually so marked, was temporarily suspended in a hot gauzy haze. — Quentin Crisp

It is no longer possible to be exotic. — Quentin Crisp

Mass-murderers are simply people who have had ENOUGH. — Quentin Crisp

Perhaps "camp" is set in the 'twenties because after that differences between the sexes - especially visible differences - began to fade. This, of course, has never mattered to women in the least. They know they are women. To homosexuals, who must, with every breath they draw, with every step they take, demonstrate that they are feminine, it is frustrating. They look back in sorrow to that more formal era and try to relive it. — Quentin Crisp

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 Crisp

I don't think you can really be proud of being gay because it isn't something you've done. You can only be proud of not being ashamed. — Quentin Crisp

You're queer, I'll kill you.' I could only ask if the speaker wanted an appointment. — Quentin Crisp

A clown is a horrible thing to happen to anyone. — Quentin Crisp

To say a thing is natural is to condone it, never to praise it. — Quentin Crisp

The idea that He would take his attention away from the universe in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds is just so unlikely I can't go along with it. — Quentin Crisp

Even a monotonously undeviating path of self-examination does not necessarily lead to self-knowledge. I stumble towards my grave confused and hurt and hungry. — Quentin Crisp

Like the voice of a number of homosexuals, this is an insinuating blend of eagerness and caution in which even such words as "hello" and "goodbye" seem not so much uttered as divulged. — Quentin Crisp

Fashion is not style. Nay, we can say more: Fashion is instead of style. Style is an idiom springing spontaneously from the personality but deliberately maintained. If you have no personality, you may be able to save your face and, possibly, your entire anatomy by following the current fashion, but all we shall know about you, when we see you coming down the street, is that you had enough money to buy a glossy magazine and were sufficiently cunning to work out the cut of the garments shown therein. — Quentin Crisp

The world now seems a stunningly ignoble place. It has not really grown all that much worse but appears to have done so because we know so much more about it than we did. — Quentin Crisp

[Sex] is only a mirage, floating in shimmering mockery before the bulging eyes of middle-aged men as they stumble with little whimpers toward the double bed, that somewhere there is a person that will evoke from them sensations of which they dimly dream they are capable. — Quentin Crisp

As a test of the closeness of your relationship with the world, sex could never be a patch on being murdered. (That's when someone really does risk his life for you.) — Quentin Crisp

Even hooligans marry, though they know that marriage is for a little while. It is alimony that is for ever. — Quentin Crisp

Quentin Crisp (to handsome young man on the street): What's the matter, sexy? Don't you like dehydrated fruit? — Quentin Crisp

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. — Quentin Crisp

Another friend began to say, "Well, Quentin has a problem of adjusting himself to society and he ... " This sentence was never finished. The ballet teacher expostulated, "I don't agree. Quentin does exactly as he pleases. The rest of us have to adapt ourselves to him." — Quentin Crisp

It's been agony but I couldn't have done it any other way. — Quentin Crisp

A fair share of anything is starvation diet to an egomaniac. — Quentin Crisp

I take it to be axiomatic that people are revolted by witnessing the shameless gratification of an appetite they do not share — Quentin Crisp

I now realize that education is a last wild effort on the part of the authorities to prevent an overdose of leisure from driving the world mad. Learning is no longer an improver; it is merely the most expensive time-filler the world has ever known. — Quentin Crisp

Without an element of vulgarity, no man can be a work of art ... I have to try and think what an artist is, apart from a hooligan who cannot live within his income of praise. — Quentin Crisp

I started to shed the monstrous aesthetic affectation of my youth so as to make room for the monstrous philistine postures of middle age, but it was some years before I was bold enough to decline an invitation to "Hamlet" on the grounds that I knew who won. — Quentin Crisp

The more people one has to love, the more one's capacity to love stretches. — Quentin Crisp

You will survive if you believe in yourself. — Quentin Crisp

God, from whose territory I had withdrawn my ambassadors at the age of fourteen. It had become obvious that he was never going to do a thing I said. — Quentin Crisp

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. — Quentin Crisp

What I wanted most of all was to use sex as a weapon to allure, subjugate, and, if possible, destroy the personality of others. — Quentin Crisp

What would you be like if you were the only person in the world? If you want to be truly happy you must be that person. — Quentin Crisp

The war between the sexes is the only one in which both sides regularly sleep with the enemy. — Quentin Crisp

Any film is at least better than real life. — Quentin Crisp

If one is not going to take the necessary precautions to avoid having parents, one must undertake to bring them up. — Quentin Crisp

Well, it has done terrifying things. Religious ideas are inflammatory in a way that I find difficult to understand. There are very few wars over the theory of relativity. Very few heated arguments, for that matter. Whereas, in Northern Ireland, they are killing one another over religion. — Quentin Crisp

I am the last of Britain's stately homos. — Quentin Crisp

It is hard enough to share wealth without being involved in undignified scenes; shared poverty consists of nothing else. — Quentin Crisp

In the cafe there was a lot of stylized cattiness, but this was never unkindly meant. Nothing at all was meant by it. It was a formal game of innuendos about other people being older than they said, about their teeth being false and their hair being a wig. Such conversation was thought to be smart and so very feminine. It was better, I need hardly say, to seem like a truly appalling woman than not like a woman at all. — Quentin Crisp

Posing was the first job I did in which I understood what I was doing. — Quentin Crisp

The message that 'love' will solve all of our problems is repeated incessantly in contemporary culture - like a philosophical tom tom. It would be closer to the truth to say that love is a contagious and virulent disease which leaves a victim in a state of near imbecility, paralysis, profound melancholia, and sometimes culminates in death. — Quentin Crisp

Exhibitionists have no friends, no friends at all. — Quentin Crisp

Bit by bit, I was becoming the almost acceptable face of homosexuality. — Quentin Crisp

Vice is its own reward. — Quentin Crisp

To live in the past is to miss today's opportunities and tomorrow's blessings. — Quentin Crisp

All liaisons between homosexuals are conducted as though they were between a chorus girl and a bishop. In some cases both parties think they are bishops. — Quentin Crisp

There is no great Dark Man !!! — Quentin Crisp

If you describe things as better than they are, you are considered to be a romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you will be called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you will be thought of as a satirist. — Quentin Crisp

Whatever has gone on in the outer world has passed me by. But I think if anyone said to me, 'if you go on like this life will pass you by,' I would reply, 'thank God for that, I nearly got mixed up in the beastly thing. — Quentin Crisp

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? — Quentin Crisp

Charisma is the ability to influence without logic. — Quentin Crisp

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

The law is simply expediency wearing a long white dress. — Quentin Crisp

Masturbation is not only an expression of self-regard: it is also the natural emotional outlet of those who, before anything has reared its ugly head, have already accepted as inevitable the wide gulf between their real futures and the expectations of their fantasies. The habit fitted snugly into my well-established world of make-believe. — Quentin Crisp

I became one of the stately homos of England. — Quentin Crisp

The proprietor had hair so red that pigmentation had flowed out into every visible inch of his skin and even into the pinks of his eyes, as the colour of flowering cherry trees stains their leaves. — Quentin Crisp

My function in life was to render clear what was already blindingly conspicuous. — Quentin Crisp

What better proof of love can there be than money? A ten-shilling note shows incontrovertibly just how mad about you a man is. — Quentin Crisp

This woman did not fly to extremes; she lived there. — Quentin Crisp

For an introvert his environment is himself and can never be subject to startling or unforeseen change. — Quentin Crisp

Sometimes I wore a fringe so deep it obscured the way ahead. This hardly mattered. There were always others to look where I was going. — Quentin Crisp

Britain cherishes her eccentrics and wisely holds that the function of government is to build a walled garden in which anarchy can flourish. — Quentin Crisp

Flowers are words even a baby can understand. — Quentin Crisp

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 Crisp

The English think that incompetence is the same thing as sincerity. — Quentin Crisp

Treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster. — Quentin Crisp

There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse. — Quentin Crisp

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. — Quentin Crisp

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. — Quentin Crisp

To minimize my guilt at going to the pictures - to call this wanton pursuit of an effete pleasure by another name - I needed movie companions as drunkards need drinking partners. If I entered a cinema alone, God might plunge his arm through the roof of the auditorium booming in a stereophonic voice, 'And you, Crisp, what are you doing here?' I would never have dared reply, 'I'm just enjoying myself, Lord.' — Quentin Crisp

Many [hooligans] discover to their shame that they have scruples; they have roots and, greatest disadvantage of all, they have hope. The fathers superior of the order do not try to influence their children in Satan; they merely shake their heads in sorrow. They know that the apostate must work out his own damnation. — Quentin Crisp

The simplest comment on my book came from my ballet teacher. She said, I wish you hadn't made every line funny. It's so depressing. — Quentin Crisp

The programs constantly repeat themselves and one another. No one has yet had the nerve to say, 'As we have nothing sensible to tell you between now and 8:30, please tune in again then. — Quentin Crisp

Manners are love in a cool climate. — Quentin Crisp

Without knowing it, I was acquiring that haughty bearing which is characteristic of so many eccentrics. What other expression would you expect to find on the face of anyone who knows that if he turns his head too quickly, he will see on the faces of others glares of stark terror or grimaces of hatred? Aloofness is the posture of self-defense. — Quentin Crisp

Los Angeles is just New York lying down. — Quentin Crisp

The worst part of being gay in the twentieth century is all that damn disco music to which one has to listen. — Quentin Crisp

It is not the simple statement of facts that ushers in freedom; it is the constant repetition of them that has this liberating effect. Tolerance is the result not of enlightenment, but of boredom. — Quentin Crisp

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?" — Quentin Crisp

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! — Quentin Crisp

Fashion is a way of not having to decide who you are. Style is deciding who you are and being able to perpetuate it. — Quentin Crisp

Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level. It's cheaper. — Quentin Crisp

If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style. — Quentin Crisp

The rest of the world in which I lived was still stumbling about in search of a weapon with which to exterminate this monster [homosexuality] whose shape and size were not yet known or even guessed at. It was thought to be Greek in origin, smaller than socialism but more deadly, especially to children. — Quentin Crisp

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? — Quentin Crisp

While 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 Crisp

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. — Quentin Crisp

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

Mr Melly had to be obscene to be believed — Quentin Crisp

My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it. — Quentin Crisp

So black was the way ahead that my progress consisted of long periods of inert despondency punctuated by spasmodic lurches forward towards any small chink of light that I thought I saw ... As the years went by, it did not get lighter but I became accustomed to the dark — Quentin Crisp

The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another. — Quentin Crisp

Muddled syntax is the outward and audible sign of confused minds, and the misuse of grammar the result of illogical thinking. — Quentin Crisp

Style is not the man; it is something better. It is a dizzy, dazzling structure that he erects about himself using as building materials selected elements from his own character. — Quentin Crisp

To lose is not always failure. — Quentin Crisp

As someone remarked, when told the new atomic bombs would explode without a bang, they can't leave anything alone. — Quentin Crisp