Quentin Crisp Quotes

71 Sourced Quotes

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

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

Quentin Crisp
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.

Quentin Crisp
'You talk for talking's sake,' she hissed. I asked if that was bad. 'I mean it,' the girl replied. 'You talk for talking's sake.' I had heard her the first time and had understood the words but not the contempt with which they were charged. 'Would you be equally annoyed,' I asked, 'if I danced for dancing's sake? […] I should have said, 'Would you hate me if I lived for living's sake?' This would have been the total question — the one to which a full reply could have saved the world.

Quentin Crisp
The time comes for everyone to do deliberately what he used to do by mistake If you are effeminate by nature, you have to find some way of telling the world that you know you are, otherwise they keep telling you.

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
As we all know from witnessing the consuming jealousy of husbands who are never faithful, people do not confine themselves to the emotions to which they are entitled.

Quentin Crisp
I never understood music. It seemed to me to be the maximum amount of noise conveying the minimum amount of information.

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

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

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

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

Quentin Crisp
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.

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

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
Closing down an interview:
I am so sorry. We have to stop there. I have just come to the end of my personality.

Quentin Crisp
The low dive had set a standard that only middle-aged hooligans could remember and to which they looked back as Mrs Lot at Sodom.

Quentin Crisp
It would be impossible to get through the kind of life that I have known without accumulating a vast unused stockpile of rage. Retaliation, though, was a luxury I could never afford. On the physical level I was too feeble. On any other I was not rich enough. I never dared to be rude to anyone. I never knew that I might not need him later. Long after fantasies of sexual excess had ceased to torment me, my imagination was inflamed by lurid day-dreams of having my revenge on the world.

Quentin Crisp
The young always have the same problem — how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this problem by defying their elders and copying each other.

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
Mass-murderers are simply people who have had ENOUGH.

Quentin Crisp
Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.

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." I remembered too well what happened to Mr and Mrs Adam. A commissionaire with a flaming sword came and asked them to leave.

Quentin Crisp
For flavour, Instant Sex will never supersede the stuff you had to peel and cook.

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
Life is a game in which the rules are constantly changing.

Quentin Crisp