Quote

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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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
Done
Story
England
Make
Stories
York
Invitation
Never
America
Streets
Invitations
Men
Back
Nobody
Talks
Life
Wanted
Went
Agent
Live
Seen
Agents
Firsts
Everybody
Street
First
Came
Musical

More quotes by Quentin Crisp

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Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave.
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Love is the extra effort we make in our dealings with those whom we do not like and once you understand that, you understand all. This idea that love overtakes you is nonsense. This is but a polite manifestation of sex. To love another you have to undertake some fragment of their destiny.
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I've never not been famous.
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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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Vice is its own reward.
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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?
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I don't think I have a tragic demeanor.
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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?
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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.
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The rest of the world in which I lived was still stumbling about in search of a weapon with which to exterminate this monster [homosexuality] whose shape and size were not yet known or even guessed at. It was thought to be Greek in origin, smaller than socialism but more deadly, especially to children.
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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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I simply haven't the nerve to imagine a being, a force, a cause which keeps the planets revolving in their orbits and then suddenly stops in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds.
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What matters is not whether you put your fork or knife together because you've finished your meal, or something like that. What matters is that you don't offend people, or hurt their feelings by mistake by saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing.
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The war between the sexes is the only one in which both sides regularly sleep with the enemy.
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It may be true that artists adopt a flamboyant appearance, but it's also true that people who look funny get stuck with the arts.
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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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Exhibitionism is like a drug. Hooked in adolescence I was now taking doses so massive they would have killed a novice.
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My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.
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If you live in America, you don't have to work. You can just drift along in the smiling and nodding racket.
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As we all know from witnessing the consuming jealousy of husbands who are never faithful, people do not confine themselves to the emotions to which they are entitled.
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