Quotes from Quentin Crisp

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.

Decency...must be an even more exhausting state to maintain than its opposite. Those who succeed seem to need a stupefying amount of sleep.

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.

Even holligans marry, though they know that marriage is but for a little while. It is alimony that is forever.

Father Time is not always a hard parent, and, though he tarries for none of his children, often lays his hand lightly upon those who have used him well making them old men and women inexorably enough, but leaving their hearts and spirits young and in full vigour. With such people the grey head is but the impression of the old fellow's hand in giving them his blessing, and every wrinkle but a notch in the quiet calendar of a well-spent life.

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

Health consists of having the same diseases as one's neighbors.

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.

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

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

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.

One should always be wary of anyone who promises that their love will last longer than a weekend.

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.

The English think incompetence is the same thing as sincerity.

This woman did not fly to extremes; she lived there.

To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.

Vice is its own reward. It is virtue which, if it is to be marketed with consumer appeal, must carry Green Shield stamps.

So black was the way ahead that my progress consisted of long periods of inert despondency punctuated by spasmodic lurches forward towards any small chink of light that I thought I saw ... As the years went by, it did not get lighter but I became accustomed to the dark.

I like living in one room and have never known what people do with the room they are not in.

Quentin Crisp (to handsome young man on the street): "What's the matter, sexy? Don't you like dehydrated fruit?

What I wanted most of all was to use sex as a weapon to allure, subjugate, and, if possible, destroy the personality of others.

All the golden societies of the past to which historians point and turn their wistful smiles have had what patience-players would call a discard pile. They operated on two levels with a slave class who worked, ate, slept, and died and a leisured class who reclined on one elbow and spoke. Naturally it is from this latter group that we learn what life at that time was like. It often makes charming reading but we can hardly take it to be the whole truth.

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.

Without an element of vulgarity, no man can be a work of art...I have to try and think what an artist is, apart from a hooligan who cannot live within his income of praise.