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.
I am asked how to remain young, and I say 'Never, never work. ' And that, of course, is the secret of it.
The poverty from which I have suffered could be diagnosed as 'Soho' poverty. It comes from having the airs and graces of a genius and no talent.
The war between the sexes is the only one in which both sides regularly sleep with the enemy.
To live in the past is to miss today's opportunities and tomorrow's blessings.
It is explained that all relationships require a little give and take. This is untrue. Any partnership demands that we give and give and give and at the last, as we flop into our graves exhausted, we are told that we didn't give enough.
When I was young, I don't know how, I spent all my time in the presence of married women telling me their troubles. And when I said 'Why did you marry?' they said, 'Oh I married to get away from home. ' And when I said, 'And why don't you leave him?' they gave the saddest answer in the world: they said, 'Where would I go?' So they stayed with men they didn't like because they had nowhere to go.
I read all the books I could find about manners, and the extraordinary thing was, in all books up to the end of the Second World War, most were directed at how to comport yourself in the presence of the ladies.
This woman did not fly to extremes; she lived there.
Never get involved with someone who wants to change you
The English think that incompetence is the same thing as sincerity.
However low a man sinks he never reaches the level of the police.
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. '
The distinction between indoors and outdoors, which in England is usually so marked, was temporarily suspended in a hot gauzy haze.
The proprietor had hair so red that pigmentation had flowed out into every visible inch of his skin and even into the pinks of his eyes, as the colour of flowering cherry trees stains their leaves.
Vice is its own reward. It is virtue which, if it is to be marketed with consumer appeal, must carry Green Shield stamps.
Sex is the last refuge of the miserable.
When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, 'Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?'
I came first to America in 1977 at the invitation of a man who wanted to make my life story into a musical. But my agent said it was not to be and it was never done. So I went back, but I'd seen New York, and I wanted to live there. Because everybody talks to you in the street. See, nobody talks to you in England.
Even hooligans marry, though they know that marriage is for a little while. It is alimony that is for ever.
Whenever we confront an unbridled desire we are surely in the presence of a tragedy-in-the-making.