Quentin Crisp - The Naked Civil Servant (1975)

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

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God, from whose territory I had withdrawn my ambassadors at the age of fourteen.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 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
He explained to me that he wanted a simple boy-meets-girl story with lyrics. This I felt was quite beyond my capabilities. I did not know any boys who met girls.

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
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
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
Mass-murderers are simply people who have had ENOUGH.

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
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 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
I became one of the stately homos-of England.

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

Quentin Crisp
There are girls who do not like real life... Some of these girls are innocent enough to think that these unreal friendships [with homosexuals] will lead to true love — a kind of sexual intercourse that will happen to them without their having to take too horribly much notice. Even those who are sufficiently sophisticated to know that this will not be so persist in these relationships. They provide an opportunity to lavish emotion on a pseudo-man without paying the price that in heterosexual circumstances would be inevitable.

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

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

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

Quentin Crisp
I found that I had become so spinsterish that I was made neurotic not only by my life of domesticity but by the slightest derangement of my room. I would burst into a fit of weeping if the kettle was not facing due east.

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
To read a novel or see a play was to drink life through a straw — to smoke it through a filter-tip. If we were not afraid of blackening our teeth or riddling our lungs with cancer — if we were a dauntless race of men with strong digestions — we would be able to devour life without the aid of these over-civilized devices.

Quentin Crisp
Health consists of having the same diseases as one's neighbours.

Quentin Crisp
"You'll never be wanted," [a draft board official] said, and thrust at me a smaller piece of paper. This described me as being incapable of being graded in grades A, B, etc., because I suffered from sexual perversion. When the story of my disgrace became one of the contemporary fables of Chelsea, a certain Miss Marshall said, "I don't much care for the expression 'suffering from.' Shouldn't it be 'glorying in'?"

Quentin Crisp