Quote

I recommend limiting one's involvement in other people's lives to a pleasantly scant minimum. This may seem too stoical a position in these madly passionate times, but madly passionate people rarely make good on their madly passionate promises.

Quentin Crisp

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Times
Involvement
Lives
Promises
Seems
Minimum
Stoical
May
Rarely
Scant
Make
Passionate
Pleasantly
Good
Promise
Madly
People
Seem
Limiting
Position
Recommend

More quotes by Quentin Crisp

Image
I was amazed to receive later a substantial sum for sitting in my room and talking about myself. If only I could get some of the back pay!
Quentin Crisp
Image
Nearly always when actors are approached by the beauticians, they try to avoid the dabs that the beauticians put on their faces. They dodge them.
Quentin Crisp
Image
The flagrantly gay Quentin Crisp dealt with homophobic bullying by refusing to bow to its onslaught. His number listed in the phone directory, he responded to derogatory remarks accompanied with a stated intent to kill him by asking, Would you like to make an appointment?
Quentin Crisp
Image
Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone - but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.
Quentin Crisp
Image
The programs constantly repeat themselves and one another. No one has yet had the nerve to say, 'As we have nothing sensible to tell you between now and 8:30, please tune in again then.
Quentin Crisp
Image
I don't believe in convention at all. I do what I have to do to stay alive.
Quentin Crisp
Image
Manners are a way of getting what you want without appearing to be an absolute swine.
Quentin Crisp
Image
However low a man sinks he never reaches the level of the police.
Quentin Crisp
Image
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
Image
Decency must be an even more exhausting state to maintain than its opposite. Those who succeed seem to need a stupefying amount of sleep.
Quentin Crisp
Image
The search for a life-style involves a journey to the interior. This is not altogether a pleasant experience, because you not only have to take stock of what you consider your assets but you also have to take a long look at what your friends call “the trouble with you.” Nevertheless, the journey is worth making.
Quentin Crisp
Image
Vice is its own reward. It is virtue which, if it is to be marketed with consumer appeal, must carry Green Shield stamps.
Quentin Crisp
Image
I am told that you regret not what you did but what you didn't do and so that's why I do everything, so as not to have any regrets.
Quentin Crisp
Image
Ask yourself, if there was to be no blame, and if there was to be no praise, who would I be then?
Quentin Crisp
Image
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
Image
What I wanted most of all was to use sex as a weapon to allure, subjugate, and, if possible, destroy the personality of others.
Quentin Crisp
Image
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
Image
God, from whose territory I had withdrawn my ambassadors at the age of fourteen. It had become obvious that he was never going to do a thing I said.
Quentin Crisp
Image
Whenever we confront an unbridled desire we are surely in the presence of a tragedy-in-the-making.
Quentin Crisp
Image
If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style.
Quentin Crisp