Quotes from Quentin Crisp

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

Any film is at least better than real life.

Abatement in the hostility of one's enemies must never be thought to signify they have been won over. It only means that one has ceased to constitute a threat.

My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.

I never spend my time doing anything I'll have to do again tomorrow.

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.

I recommend limiting one's involvement in other people's lives to a pleasantly scant minimum.

Sex is the last refuge of the miserable.

Europeans have quarrelled since the beginning of time.

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.

To love another person you have to undertake some fragment of their destiny.

Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone - but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.

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

If you truly love me, kill the bartender.

There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; the second that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can't think what to do with the long winter evenings.

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.

Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.

If love means anything at all it means extending your hand to the unlovable.

Manners are love in a cool climate.

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

The more people one has to love, the more one's capacity to love stretches.

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.

When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, 'Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?

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.