Quotes By Quentin Crisp

Decency must be an even more exhausting state to maintain than its opposite. Those who succeed seem to need a stupefying amount of sleep.

Nothing more rapidly inclines a person to go into a monastery than reading a book on etiquette. There are so many trivial ways in which it is possible to commit some social sin.

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.

An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last installment missing.

Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave.

There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; the second that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can't think what to do with the long winter evenings.

Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.

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.

Living en famille provides the strongest motives for rudeness combined with the maximum opportunity for displaying it.

The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to plant their whole life in the hands of some other person. I would describe this method of searching for happiness as immature. Development of character consists solely in moving toward self-sufficiency.

Manners are love in a cool climate.

The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.