Quentin Crisp Quotes

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

The Scots are very hospitable; almost as hospitable as the Americans.

In England, nobody's your friend.

The absolute nothingness of death is a blessing. Something to look forward to.

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

Every day someone notices me and waves to me, or stops and speaks to me, or asks me for an autograph, or photographs me.

I never say 'No' to anything.

In fact I try to spend at least one, if not two days without ever leaving my room. Because if I didn't, when would I recharge my batteries?

The worst part of being gay in the twentieth century is all that damn disco music to which one has to listen.

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?"

Neither look forward where there is doubt nor backward where there is regret. Look inward and ask not if there is anything outside you want, but whether there is anything inside that you have not yet unpacked.

It is not the simple statement of facts that ushers in freedom; it is the constant repetition of them that has this liberating effect. Tolerance is the result not of enlightenment, but of boredom.

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.

One of the special beauties of America is that it is the only country in the world where you are not advised to learn the language before entering. Before I ever set out for the United States, I asked a friend if I should study American. His answer was unequivocal. "On no account," he said. "The more English you sound, the more likely you are to be believed."

If a man were to look over the fence on one side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his left had laid his garden path round a central lawn; and were to look over the fence on the other side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his right had laid his path down the middle of the lawn, and were then to lay his own garden path diagonally from one corner to the other, that man's soul would be lost. Originality is only to be praised when not prefaced by the look to right and left.

You fall out of your mother's womb, you crawl across open country under fire, and drop into your grave.

I am told that you regret not what you did but what you didn't do; and so that's why I do everything, so as not to have any regrets.

Politics are not an instrument for effecting social change; they are the art of making the inevitable appear to be a matter of wise human choice.

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

The world now seems a stunningly ignoble place. It has not really grown all that much worse but appears to have done so because we know so much more about it than we did.

The Americans, of course, are quite dotty with hospitality.

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

If I were God - and I never understand why I'm not - I should say, "Shop around, I don't think you'll find a better bargain than here."

Nothing shortens a journey so pleasantly as an account of misfortunes at which the hearer is permitted to laugh.

My outlook was so limited that I assumed that all deviates were openly despised and rejected. Their grief and their fear drew my melancholy nature strongly. At first I only wanted to wallow in their misery, but, as time went by, I longed to reach its very essence. Finally I desired to represent it. By this process I managed to shift homosexuality from being a burden to being a cause. The weight lifted and some of the guilt evaporated.

Our clothes are too much a part of us for most of us ever to be entirely indifferent to their condition: it is as though the fabric were indeed a natural extension of the body, or even of the soul.

I have to realise that as I am only English and am allowed to live in America, I have to give something in return. And since I cannot build a hospital, or endow a university, I can only give my infinite availability.

I had a friend who had two degrees of being made up: when invited I would say 'Can I make up?' and he would say 'Oh yes - tinted?', or he would say, 'Oh yes - clotted?'

Other-cheekism is not only a way of purifying the soul, it is also part of every weak person's survival kit.

My function in life was to render clear what was already blindingly conspicuous.

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.

I went out into the world when I was about 22. I wrote books and I illustrated books and did book covers, and I taught tap-dancing, and I was a model in the art school. I had no ability for any of those things, but what else could I do?

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.

People are not heterosexual or homosexual, just sexual.

You should make no effort to try to join society, stay right where you are. Give your name and serial number and wait for society to come to you.

Britain cherishes her eccentrics and wisely holds that the function of government is to build a walled garden in which anarchy can flourish.

For an introvert his environment is himself and can never be subject to startling or unforeseen change.

The world was very feminine when I was young. And now it's very masculine.

Living en famille provides the strongest motives for rudeness combined with the maximum opportunity for displaying it.

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

It's a strange situation, but people will pay your fare to get you to go and tell them how to be happy.

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

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

Most men when they make up their faces, the makeup stands forward, and their faces are behind.

While I have very little to say in favor of sex (it's vastly overrated, it's frequently unnecessary, and it's messy), it is greatly to be preferred to the interminable torments of romantic agony through which two people tear one another limb from limb while professing altruistic devotion.

Ask yourself, if there was to be no blame, and if there was to be no praise, who would I be then?

What is privacy if not for invading?

Believe in fate, but lean forward where fate can see you.