Quentin Crisp (born Denis Charles Pratt; (1908-12-25)25 December 1908 – (1999-11-21)21 November 1999) was an English writer, raconteur and actor.
Even a monotonously undeviating path of self-examination does not necessarily lead to self-knowledge. I stumble towards my grave confused and hurt and hungry.
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.
Europeans are quarrelsome.
The law is simply expediency wearing a long white dress.
I never saw Portsmouth by day.
England is very dreary, but I'm a people person.
In England, the system is benign and the people are hostile. In America, the people are friendlyand the system is brutal!
Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses.
Mass-murderers are simply people who have had ENOUGH.
Exhibitionism is like a drug. Hooked in adolescence I was now taking doses so massive they would have killed a novice.
Abatement in the hostility of one's enemies must never be thought to signify they have been won over. It only means that one has ceased to constitute a threat.
To say a thing is natural is to condone it, never to praise it.
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.
I don't think I have a tragic demeanor.
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. '
Love is the extra effort we make in our dealings with those whom we do not like and once you understand that, you understand all. This idea that love overtakes you is nonsense. This is but a polite manifestation of sex. To love another you have to undertake some fragment of their destiny.
I go wherever my fare is paid.
Another friend began to say, "Well, Quentin has a problem of adjusting himself to society and he. . . " This sentence was never finished. The ballet teacher expostulated, "I don't agree. Quentin does exactly as he pleases. The rest of us have to adapt ourselves to him. "
I asked a girl who came from America to England, when I was only English, and she admitted she had been to a drama school. And I said, "What did they teach you?" And she said, "They taught me to be a candle burning in an empty room. " I'm happy to say she was laughing while she said it, but she meant it. I've never learned to be a candle burning in an empty room. So I go on the screen, and I say whatever I'm told to say.