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Quentin Crisp quotes

English Writer December 25, 1908 – November 21, 1999

Quentin Crisp quotes in french
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Quotes

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. Quentin Crisp
Quentin Crisp quote: "Manners are love in a cool climate."
Manners are love in a cool climate. Quentin Crisp
Quentin Crisp quote: "If love means anything at all it means extending your hand to..."
If love means anything at all it means extending your hand to the unlovable. 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. Quentin Crisp
Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone - but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding. Quentin Crisp
As soon as I put my uniform on, the rest of my life solidified around me like a plaster cast. From that moment on, my friends were anyone who could put up with the disgrace; my occupation, any job from which I was not given the sack; my playground, any cafe or restaurant from which I was not barred or any street corner from which the police did not move me on. Quentin Crisp
Quentin Crisp quote: "Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the..."
Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave. Quentin Crisp
Whatever has gone on in the outer world has passed me by. But I think if anyone said to me, 'if you go on like this life will pass you by,' I would reply, 'thank God for that, I nearly got mixed up in the beastly thing. Quentin Crisp
Quentin Crisp quote: "I learned very early in life that I was always going to need..."
I learned very early in life that I was always going to need people more than they needed me. Quentin Crisp
Quentin Crisp quote: "Living en famille provides the strongest motives for rudeness..."
Living en famille provides the strongest motives for rudeness combined with the maximum opportunity for displaying it. Quentin Crisp
The British do not expect happiness. I had the impression, all the time that I lived there, that they do not want to be happy; they want to be right. Quentin Crisp
The whole set of stylizations that are known as "camp" (a word that I was hearing then for the first time) was, in 1926, self-explanatory. Women moved and gesticulated in this way. Homosexuals wished for obvious reasons to copy them. The strange thing about "camp" is that it has been fossilized. The mannerisms have never changed. If I were now to see a woman sitting with her knees clamped together, one hand on her hip and the other lightly touching her back hair, I should think, "Either she... Quentin Crisp
I was from birth an object of mild ridicule because of my movements - especially the perpetual flutter of my hands - and my voice. Like the voices of a number of homosexuals, this is an insinuating blend of eagerness and caution in which even such words as "hello" and "goodbye" seem not so much uttered as divulged. But these natural outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual disgrace were not enough. People could say that I was ignorant of them or was trying without success to hide... Quentin Crisp
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. Quentin Crisp
Masturbation is not only an expression of self-regard: it is also the natural emotional outlet of those who, before anything has reared its ugly head, have already accepted as inevitable the wide gulf between their real futures and the expectations of their fantasies. The habit fitted snugly into my well-established world of make-believe. Quentin Crisp

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