Quentin Crisp Quotes - Page 10

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

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.

Did you know that Allah promises you a seat in Paradise if you kill a Christian?

When I was young, I wanted to find the Great Dark Man. When I said that I realise now that people thought that by 'dark' I meant black, and that by 'great' I meant big. Whereas I only meant a strong, mysterious person; someone who would 'take me away from all this.'

The programs constantly repeat themselves and one another. No one has yet had the nerve to say, 'As we have nothing sensible to tell you between now and 8:30, please tune in again then.

Even hooligans marry, though they know that marriage is for a little while. It is alimony that is for ever.

To minimize my guilt at going to the pictures - to call this wanton pursuit of an effete pleasure by another name - I needed movie companions as drunkards need drinking partners. If I entered a cinema alone, God might plunge his arm through the roof of the auditorium booming in a stereophonic voice, 'And you, Crisp, what are you doing here?' I would never have dared reply, 'I'm just enjoying myself, Lord.'

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

The rest of the world in which I lived was still stumbling about in search of a weapon with which to exterminate this monster [homosexuality] whose shape and size were not yet known or even guessed at. It was thought to be Greek in origin, smaller than socialism but more deadly, especially to children.

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

I found that I had become so spinsterish that I was made neurotic not only by my life of domesticity but by the slightest derangement of my room. I would burst into a fit of weeping if the kettle was not facing due east.

The simplest comment on my book came from my ballet teacher. She said, "I wish you hadn't made every line funny. It's so depressing."

All liaisons between homosexuals are conducted as though they were between a chorus girl and a bishop. In some cases both parties think they are bishops.

As soon as a person takes a part as a homosexual, the press says, "What do your wife and children think of this?" And the actor never says, "Well, last week I was a murderer, and the week before that I was a child molester, and the week before that I was a lunatic. But now I'm a homosexual."

Any film is at least better than real life.

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

If you live in America, you don't have to work. You can just drift along in the smiling and nodding racket.

Posing was the first job I did in which I understood what I was doing.

Exhibitionists have no friends, no friends at all.

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

All America is much the same.

I now realize that education is a last wild effort on the part of the authorities to prevent an overdose of leisure from driving the world mad. Learning is no longer an improver; it is merely the most expensive time-filler the world has ever known.

The court was not previously aware of the prisoner's many accomplishments. In view of these, we see fit to impose the death penalty.

It is true that in America I've become a national hero, but really I was a hopeless case, that was all.