Quentin Crisp
Quentin Crisp
Quentin Crisp25 December 1908 – 21 November 1999) was an English writer and raconteur...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth25 December 1908
fashion cutting work-out
Fashion is not style. Nay, we can say more: Fashion is instead of style. Style is an idiom springing spontaneously from the personality but deliberately maintained. If you have no personality, you may be able to save your face and, possibly, your entire anatomy by following the current fashion, but all we shall know about you, when we see you coming down the street, is that you had enough money to buy a glossy magazine and were sufficiently cunning to work out the cut of the garments shown therein.
believe ifs believe-in-yourself
You will survive if you believe in yourself.
block lying people
Of course I lie to people. But I lie altruistically - for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist - but then what isn t?
expanding-universe addresses sides
In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast. Those who once inhabited the suburbs of human contempt find that without changing their address they eventually live in the metropolis.
book reading way
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.
hate men thinking
Mainstream people dislike homosexuality because they can't help concentrating on what homosexual men do to one another. And when you contemplate what people do, you think of yourself doing it. And they don't like that. That's the famous joke: I don't like peas, and I'm glad I don't like them, because if I liked them I would eat them and I hate them.
believe fate
Believe in fate, but lean forward where fate can see you.
truth communication diplomatic-relations
Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.
teenage parent rebel
The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.
fathers-day mother dad
My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.
blame praise asks
Ask yourself, if there was to be no blame, and if there was to be no praise, who would I be then?
mean enemy threat
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.
bullying gay phones
The flagrantly gay Quentin Crisp dealt with homophobic bullying by refusing to bow to its onslaught. His number listed in the phone directory, he responded to derogatory remarks accompanied with a stated intent to kill him by asking, "Would you like to make an appointment?"
love destiny extra-effort
To love another person you have to undertake some fragment of their destiny.