Quote

If you describe things as better than they are, you are considered to be a romantic if you describe things as worse than they are, you will be called a realist and if you describe things exactly as they are, you will be thought of as a satirist.

Quentin Crisp

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Quentin Crisp
Age: 90 †
Born: 1908
Born: December 25
Died: 1999
Died: November 21
Actor
Autobiographer
Film Actor
Graphic Designer
Model
Socialite
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Writer
Sutton
London
Daniel Pratt
Denis Charles Pratt
Writing
Describe
Things
Romantic
Considered
Worse
Exactly
Called
Thought
Satirist
Better
Realist

More quotes by Quentin Crisp

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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.
Quentin Crisp
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Women have decided to be people, which is a great mistake. Women were nicer than people.
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A fair share of anything is starvation diet to an egomaniac.
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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.
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I recommend limiting one's involvement in other people's lives to a pleasantly scant minimum.
Quentin Crisp
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The court was not previously aware of the prisoner's many accomplishments. In view of these, we see fit to impose the death penalty.
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Our clothes are too much a part of us for most of us ever to be entirely indifferent to their condition: it is as though the fabric were indeed a natural extension of the body, or even of the soul.
Quentin Crisp
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In Manhattan, when you're out of the front door, you're on, and you have to be ready to smile and speak to people.
Quentin Crisp
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In England, nobody's your friend.
Quentin Crisp
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To love another person you have to undertake some fragment of their destiny.
Quentin Crisp
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I'm too old to make drawings.
Quentin Crisp
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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.
Quentin Crisp
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I can't remember ever having a tragic demeanor. Although my life was tragedy.
Quentin Crisp
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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.
Quentin Crisp
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To say a thing is natural is to condone it, never to praise it.
Quentin Crisp
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The ... problem that confronts homosexuals is that they set out to win the love of a real man. If they succeed, they fail. A man who goes with other men is not what they would call a real man. The conundrum is incapable of resolution, but that does not make homosexuals give it up.
Quentin Crisp
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Exhibitionists have no friends, no friends at all.
Quentin Crisp
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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.
Quentin Crisp
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Never sweep. After four years the dirt gets no worse.
Quentin Crisp
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Masturbation is not only an expression of self-regard: it is also the natural emotional outlet of those who...have already accepted as inevitable the wide gulf between their real futures and the expectations of their fantasies.
Quentin Crisp