Nothing shortens a journey so pleasantly as an account of misfortunes at which the hearer is permitted to laugh.
Quentin CrispIn Manhattan, every flat surface is a potential stage and every inattentive waiter an unemployed, possibly unemployable, actor.
Quentin CrispI recommend limiting one's involvement in other people's lives to a pleasantly scant minimum.
Quentin CrispThe 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.
Quentin CrispBecause it is in the nature of things that they become extreme, we have passed down from manliness to cruelty. If I had been told when I was 20 that there was a tavern in the town where the brave and the cruel were gathered together, I would have run all the way and I would have gone up to the largest and leatheriest of the denizens and said: If you truly love me, kill the bartender.
Quentin Crisp