Quentin Crisp Quotes

Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses.

Love is the extra effort we make in our dealings with those whom we do not like and once you understand that, you understand all. This idea that love overtakes you is nonsense. This is but a polite manifestation of sex. To love another you have to undertake some fragment of their destiny.

I simply haven't the nerve to imagine a being, a force, a cause which keeps the planets revolving in their orbits and then suddenly stops in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds.

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.

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

In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast.

Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are.

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

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.

Vice is its own reward.

If Mr. Vincent Price were to be co-starred with Miss Bette Davis in a story by Mr. Edgar Allan Poe directed by Mr. Roger Corman, it could not fully express the pent-up violence and depravity of a single day in the life of the average family.

Euphemisms are not, as many young people think, useless verbiage for that which can and should be said bluntly; they are like secret agents on a delicate mission, they must airily pass by a stinking mess with barely so much as a nod of the head, make their point of constructive criticism and continue on in calm forbearance. Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.

Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.

Neither look forward where there is doubt nor backward where there is regret. Look inward and ask not if there is anything outside you want, but whether there is anything inside that you have not yet unpacked.

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.

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.

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.

No effort is required to define or even attain happiness, but enormous concentration is needed to abandon everything else.

Nearly always when actors are approached by the beauticians, they try to avoid the dabs that the beauticians put on their faces. They dodge them.

You fall out of your mother's womb, you crawl across open country under fire, and drop into your grave.

The curiosity of the neighbors about you, is a tribute to your individuality, and you should encourage it

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.

Exhibitionism is like a drug. Hooked in adolescence I was now taking doses so massive they would have killed a novice.

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.

Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.

Mainstream people dislike homosexuality because they can't help concentrating on what homosexual men do to one another. And when you contemplate what people do, you think of yourself doing it. And they don't like that. That's the famous joke: I don't like peas, and I'm glad I don't like them, because if I liked them I would eat them and I hate them.

The formula for achieving a successful relationship is simple: you should treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.

In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast. Those who once inhabited the suburbs of human contempt find that without changing their address they eventually live in the metropolis.

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

The law is simply expediency wearing a long white dress.

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

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.

For flavor, instant sex will never supersede the stuff you have to peel and cook.

Believe in fate, but lean forward where fate can see you.

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.

The continued propinquity of another human being cramps the style after a time unless that person is somebody you think you love. Then the burden becomes intolerable at once.

Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave.

Manners are a way of getting what you want without appearing to be an absolute swine.

When asked, 'Shall I tell my mother I'm gay?', I reply, 'Never tell your mother anything.

Living en famille provides the strongest motives for rudeness combined with the maximum opportunity for displaying it.

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.

To my disappointment I now realized that to know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.

The trouble with children is that they're not returnable.

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

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?'

However low a man sinks he never reaches the level of the police.

The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.

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.

To love another person you have to undertake some fragment of their destiny.

Men get laid, but women get screwed.