Quentin Crisp Quotes - Page 7

Vienna is cold, and dark, and sad. It is laid out as though for a royal parade; the streets are wide and they're flanked by monumental buildings, decorated with the faces of angry gods. And on the roof are statues of national heroes, wielding weapons of destruction.

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.

God is so angry. All that power, and so mean with it.

I never really found out what love was.

The law is simply expediency wearing a long white dress.

I don't hold with abroad and think that foreigners speak English when our backs are turned.

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

Los Angeles is just New York lying down.

What better proof of love can there be than money? A ten-shilling note shows incontrovertibly just how mad about you a man is.

I like living in one room and have never known what people do with the room they are not in.

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.

I was beaten up wherever I went, and people shouted at me and cursed me and threw things at me.

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."

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 never saw Portsmouth by day.

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?'

The gymnasiacs of Venice, in California, are so addicted to these practices that there has arisen a nation of men who can no longer put their arms against their sides

I would never go to a place and live there because the weather was good or the scenery was beautiful or the architecture was wonderful. I would only go because the people are kind, and in America, everybody's your friend and happiness rains down from the sky.

America believes in freedom. The English don't believe in it. They don't believe in happiness.

What is privacy if not for invading?

Bit by bit, I was becoming the almost acceptable face of homosexuality.

I am the last of Britain's stately homos.

This woman did not fly to extremes; she lived there.

What matters is not whether you put your fork or knife together because you've finished your meal, or something like that. What matters is that you don't offend people, or hurt their feelings by mistake by saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing.

Now you can leave home at any time you like.Your mother comes down and finds a picture of the Eiffel Tower on her plate. And she says, 'Oh! Rosemary's gone to Paris. No wonder the bathroom was so tidy.' And nobody minds. But in my day, to go abroad with all those wicked Frenchmen, what would become of them? So no-one ever went anywhere.