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I have to realise that as I am only English and am allowed to live in America, I have to give something in return. And since I cannot build a hospital, or endow a university, I can only give my infinite availability.

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
Something
Build
Hospital
Return
Realise
Since
Realising
Cannot
Hospitals
America
Allowed
Give
University
Live
English
Endow
Giving
Infinite
Availability

More quotes by Quentin Crisp

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The formula for achieving a successful relationship is simple: you should treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.
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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.
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That's the only sense in which I've been lucky: I have the kind of face to which cosmetics could be applied.
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When asked, 'Shall I tell my mother I'm gay?', I reply, 'Never tell your mother anything.
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The Americans, of course, are quite dotty with hospitality.
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The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.
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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?
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Michelangelo worked from within. He described not the excitements of touching or seeing a man but the excitement of being Man.
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Nothing shortens a journey so pleasantly as an account of misfortunes at which the hearer is permitted to laugh.
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Politics are not an instrument for effecting social change they are the art of making the inevitable appear to be a matter of wise human choice.
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Assoon as I stepped out of my mother's womb on to dry land, I realized that I had made a mistake?but the trouble with children is that they are not returnable.
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Ask yourself, if there was to be no blame, and if there was to be no praise, who would I be then?
Quentin Crisp
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Charisma is the ability to influence without logic.
Quentin Crisp
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To lose is not always failure.
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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.
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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.
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Men get laid, but women get screwed.
Quentin Crisp
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Sex is the last refuge of the miserable.
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Of course I lie to people. But I lie altruistically - for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist - but then what isn't?
Quentin Crisp
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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?'
Quentin Crisp