Quentin Crisp
Quentin Crisp
Quentin Crisp25 December 1908 – 21 November 1999) was an English writer and raconteur...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth25 December 1908
loses
To lose is not always failure.
hands desire want
The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to place their entire life in the hands of some other person. For this purpose they frequently choose someone who doesn't even want the beastly thing.
sex personality use
What I wanted most of all was to use sex as a weapon to allure, subjugate, and, if possible, destroy the personality of others.
talent ifs
If I have any talent at all, it is not for doing but for being.
jobs firsts posing
Posing was the first job I did in which I understood what I was doing.
littles alimony knows
Even hooligans marry, though they know that marriage is for a little while. It is alimony that is for ever.
grief essence guilt
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.
expression hatred tears
Fear and hatred do not seem to find expression in tears.
england hot distinction
The distinction between indoors and outdoors, which in England is usually so marked, was temporarily suspended in a hot gauzy haze.
views accomplishment death-penalty
The court was not previously aware of the prisoner's many accomplishments. In view of these, we see fit to impose the death penalty.
england homosexuality
I became one of the stately homos of England.
astrology venus rubbish
You see, astrology is like fortune-telling. If you can't get it right, you say, "Well, if Venus was doing something peculiar in the background, that would alter your prognostication--because, of course, astrology is rubbish.
sex mistake thinking
I have come to think that both sex and politics are a mistake and that any attempt to establish a connection between the two is the greatest error of all.
gay disco-music century
The worst part of being gay in the twentieth century is all that damn disco music to which one has to listen.