Quentin Crisp quotes - page 2

As someone remarked, when told the new atomic bombs would explode without a bang, "they can't leave anything alone." (Quentin Crisp)
Even hooligans marry, though they know that marriage is for a little while. It is alimony that is for ever. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
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God, from whose territory I had withdrawn my ambassadors at the age of fourteen.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. View quote
Quentin Crisp
If I have any talent at all, it is not for doing but for being. View quote
Quentin Crisp
I take it to be axiomatic that people are revolted by witnessing the shameless gratification of an appetite they do not share. View quote
Quentin Crisp
I have come to think that both sex and politics are a mistake and that any attempt to establish a connection between the two is the greatest error of all. View quote
Quentin Crisp
Mass-murderers are simply people who have had ENOUGH. View quote
Quentin Crisp
In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast. View quote
Quentin Crisp
The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to place their entire life in the hands of some other person. For this purpose they frequently choose someone who doesn't even want the beastly thing. (Quentin Crisp)
Michelangelo worked from within. He described not the excitements of touching or seeing a man but the excitement of being Man. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
Quentin Crisp
Bit by bit, I was becoming the almost acceptable face of homosexuality. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
Quentin Crisp
I never understood music. It seemed to me to be the maximum amount of noise conveying the minimum amount of information. View quote
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. View quote
Quentin Crisp
To my disappointment I now realized that to know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody. View quote
Quentin Crisp
Posing was the first job I did in which I understood what I was doing. (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! View quote
Quentin Crisp
Exhibitionism is like a drug. Hooked in adolescence I was now taking doses so massive they would have killed a novice. View quote
Quentin Crisp
I never saw Portsmouth by day. View quote
Quentin Crisp
The distinction between indoors and outdoors, which in England is usually so marked, was temporarily suspended in a hot gauzy haze. View quote
Quentin Crisp