Quentin Crisp Quotes - Page 9

Quotes about:

• To say a thing is natural is to condone it, never to praise it.

  Quentin Crisp

  Statistics, Praise, Natural

  6 Copy quote

• I don't know how people act. I've never understood that.

  Quentin Crisp

  People, Understood, Know How

  Source: www.avclub.com

  4 Copy quote

• I never miss England.

  Quentin Crisp

  Missing, England

  Source: www.avclub.com

  5 Copy quote

• Life is a game in which the rules are constantly changing; nothing spoils a game more than those who take it seriously. Adultery? Phooey! You should never subjugate yourself to another nor seek the subjugation of someone else to yourself. If you follow that Crispian principle you will be able to say Phooey, too, instead of reaching for your gun when you fancy yourself betrayed.

  Quentin Crisp

  Gun, Games, Principles

  11 Copy quote

• I'm happy. I don't ever have to pay anything, and I don't ever have to wash the dishes, and I don't ever have to behave nicely.

  Quentin Crisp

  Pay, Dishes, Behave

  Source: www.avclub.com

  4 Copy quote

• I have to work in England, but here in America you don't have to work. You can sort of enter the profession of being.

  Quentin Crisp

  America, England, Profession

  Source: www.avclub.com

  4 Copy quote

• The United States are a miracle: the division between two states is sometimes a river or a mountain, and sometimes it's a straight line. But nobody says, "That tree really belongs in South Carolina. I shan't do anything about it now, I'll get it back later." I shall go after I am here to London and after that to Potsdam, where Comrade Stalin, Mr Churchill and Harry Truman divided up Europe; and what we see now is the result of that. The Americans would have accepted it. But Europeans don't accept anything.

  Quentin Crisp

  Europe, Two, Rivers

  Source: davidbenson.webs.com

  4 Copy quote

• I have known female whores who spoke very bitterly of their calling. "If they don't like my face, they can put a cushion over it. I know it's not that they're interested in." But to the boys this profession never seemed shameful. It was their daytime occupations for which they felt the need to apologize. In some instances, these were lower class or humdrum or, worst of all, unfeminine. At least whoring was never that.

  Quentin Crisp

  Boys, Class, Faces

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Looks, Way, Sometimes

  "The Naked Civil Servant". Book by Quentin Crisp, Chapter 7, 1968.

  4 Copy quote

• If sophistication is a matter of being in control of our primary reactions, we may now be sophisticated. At least we shall be fairly confident of ourselves and may, with any luck, be confident of others. Our object will be to enjoy our selves. But to make sure that our names are permanently on the cast list, it will be advisable to be of interest to others. This aim must never be confused with the desire to be popular.

  Quentin Crisp

  Confused, Self, Names

  5 Copy quote

• Style, in the broadest sense of all, is consciousness. More specifically it is a consistent idiom arising spontaneously from the personality but deliberately maintained.

  Quentin Crisp

  Personality, Style, Consciousness

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Age, Ambassadors, Territory

  "The Naked Civil Servant". Book by Quentin Crisp, Chapter 16, 1968.

  4 Copy quote

• Nowadays people don't use face powder; they say it dries the skin. But I makeup in the old-fashioned way.

  Quentin Crisp

  Makeup, People, Skins

  Source: davidbenson.webs.com

  4 Copy quote

• As far as I know, you can fancy someone, you can enjoy their company or you can wish them well. But what being in love is, I don't know.

  Quentin Crisp

  Being In Love, Love Is, Wish

  Source: davidbenson.webs.com

  4 Copy quote

• I learned very early in life that I was always going to need people more than they needed me

  Quentin Crisp

  People, Needs, Needed

  5 Copy quote

• I've come from a very masculine country to a feminine country. England was very masculine; people went from England to abroad, and they landed from above and they said "These are the gods you will worship, these are the crops you will grow, now go away and do it." Which is a manly attitude. Americans go abroad and they say, "Try not to quarrel so much", which is a feminine attitude.

  Quentin Crisp

  Country, Attitude, People

  Source: davidbenson.webs.com

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Sex, Personality, Use

  4 Copy quote

• All this cut-price transcendentalism does not prevent California from being a startlingly physical state. This becomes most obvious where Los Angeles saunters down to the sea. The region is called Venice.

  Quentin Crisp

  Cutting, Sea, California

  4 Copy quote

• Central Europe is full of little countries standing shoulder to shoulder with no window to the sea. They are like the passengers in a rush-hour train which has stopped between stations for three centuries. And they all hate one another. And they're all crushed together waving their national flags, clanking their national chains, jabbering their national language.

  Quentin Crisp

  Country, Hate, Europe

  Source: davidbenson.webs.com

  5 Copy quote

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

  Quentin Crisp

  Bangs, Bombs, Atomic Bomb

  "The Naked Civil Servant". Book by Quentin Crisp, Chapter 13, 1968.

  4 Copy quote

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

  Quentin Crisp

  Hot, England, Haze

  "The Naked Civil Servant". Book by Quentin Crisp, Chapter 13, 1968.

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Quentin Crisp

  Sex, Mistake, Thinking

  Foreword to "Conversations with My Elders" by Boze Hadleigh, 1986.

  4 Copy quote

• You see, astrology is like fortune-telling. If you can't get it right, you say, "Well, if Venus was doing something peculiar in the background, that would alter your prognostication--because, of course, astrology is rubbish.

  Quentin Crisp

  Astrology, Peculiar, Venus

  4 Copy quote

• I became one of the stately homos of England.

  Quentin Crisp

  England, Homosexuality

  The Naked Civil Servant ch. 24 (1968) See Hemans 3; Woolf 4

  4 Copy quote

• Europeans are quarrelsome.

  Quentin Crisp

  Source: davidbenson.webs.com

  6 Copy quote

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