Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
Quentin Crisp
54 quotes
“I suppose when I was a child, when I lived almost entirely in a dream world, I suppose I thought of myself as a woman, but later on you realise you have to live in the real world and that you are not. You are only in some senses effeminate or feminine, and you must make this compromise, you must learn to live in a world where statistically you are a man, whatever you may think about yourself. I didn't want to become anything. Once I'd accepted the world, all I wanted was that the world should understand what kind of person I was.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) first seen 1977 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television interview (1977), as cited in "Quentin Crisp was trans, say activists", The Telegraph (28 February 2026).
“Fashion is a way of not having to decide who you are. Style is deciding who you are and being able to perpetuate it.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech (29 October 1980).
“I have come to think that both sex and politics are a mistake and that any attempt to establish a connection between the two is the greatest error of all.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Foreword by Quentin Crisp to Conversations with my Elders by Boze Hadleigh (1986)
“A pinch of notoriety will do.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: How to Go to the Movies (1988), part I: The New Hollywood
“Keeping up with the Joneses was a full-time job with my mother and father. It was not until many years later when I lived alone that I realized how much cheaper it was to drag the Joneses down to my level.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Exhibitionism is like a drug. Hooked in adolescence I was now taking doses so massive they would have killed a novice.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sometimes I wore a fringe so deep it obscured the way ahead. This hardly mattered. There were always others to look where I was going.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To my disappointment I now realized that to know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I take it to be axiomatic that people are revolted by witnessing the shameless gratification of an appetite they do not share.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I started to shed the monstrous aesthetic affectation of my youth so as to make room for the monstrous philistine postures of middle age, but it was some years before I was bold enough to decline an invitation to "Hamlet" on the grounds that I knew who won.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I acquiesced in this on the grounds that the most anyone can expect from a holiday is a change of agony.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As someone remarked, when told the new atomic bombs would explode without a bang, "they can’t leave anything alone.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The distinction between indoors and outdoors, which in England is usually so marked, was temporarily suspended in a hot gauzy haze.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The proprietor had hair so red that pigmentation had flowed out into every visible inch of his skin and even into the pinks of his eyes, as the colour of flowering cherry trees stains their leaves.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I never saw Portsmouth by day.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All liaisons between homosexuals are conducted as though they were between a chorus girl and a bishop. In some cases both parties think they are bishops.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was no need to do any housework at all. After four years the dirt doesn’t get any worse.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The measure of woman’s distaste for any part of her life lies not in the loudness of her lamentations (these are only an attempt to buy a martyr’s crown at a reduced price) but in her persistent pursuit of that occupation of which she never ceases to complain.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You'll never be wanted," [a draft board official] said, and thrust at me a smaller piece of paper. This described me as being incapable of being graded in grades A, B, etc., because I suffered from sexual perversion. When the story of my disgrace became one of the contemporary fables of Chelsea, a certain Miss Marshall said, "I don't much care for the expression 'suffering from.' Shouldn't it be 'glorying in'?”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When a third wave of poverty overwhelmed me, I knew with even greater certitude than when I lived in Clerkenwell that the only complete solution to my problems was suicide. I never brought it off. I was afraid... Hopelessness was thinly spread like a drizzle over my whole outlook. But, in an emergency, I could not find a puddle of despondency deep enough to drown in.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If I have any talent at all, it is not for doing but for being.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Posing was the first job I did in which I understood what I was doing.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Michelangelo worked from within. He described not the excitements of touching or seeing a man but the excitement of being Man.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When stripped, I looked less like "Il David" than a plucked chicken that died of myxomatosis.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The young always have the same problem — how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this problem by defying their elders and copying each other.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are girls who do not like real life... Some of these girls are innocent enough to think that these unreal friendships [with homosexuals] will lead to true love — a kind of sexual intercourse that will happen to them without their having to take too horribly much notice. Even those who are sufficiently sophisticated to know that this will not be so persist in these relationships. They provide an opportunity to lavish emotion on a pseudo-man without paying the price that in heterosexual circumstances would be inevitable.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I found that I had become so spinsterish that I was made neurotic not only by my life of domesticity but by the slightest derangement of my room. I would burst into a fit of weeping if the kettle was not facing due east.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Health consists of having the same diseases as one’s neighbours.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I became one of the stately homos of England.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I now know that if you describe things as better as they are, you are considered to be romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you are called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you are called a satirist.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The simplest comment on my book came from my ballet teacher. She said, "I wish you hadn’t made every line funny. It’s so depressing.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The low dive had set a standard that only middle-aged hooligans could remember and to which they looked back as Mrs Lot at Sodom.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even hooligans marry, though they know that marriage is for a little while. It is alimony that is for ever.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Many [hooligans] discover to their shame that they have scruples; they have roots and, greatest disadvantage of all, they have hope. The fathers superior of the order do not try to influence their children in Satan; they merely shake their heads in sorrow. They know that the apostate must work out his own damnation.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Another friend began to say, "Well, Quentin has a problem of adjusting himself to society and he..." This sentence was never finished. The ballet teacher expostulated, "I don't agree. Quentin does exactly as he pleases. The rest of us have to adapt ourselves to him.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He explained to me that he wanted a simple boy-meets-girl story with lyrics. This I felt was quite beyond my capabilities. I did not know any boys who met girls.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I never understood music. It seemed to me to be the maximum amount of noise conveying the minimum amount of information.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To read a novel or see a play was to drink life through a straw — to smoke it through a filter-tip. If we were not afraid of blackening our teeth or riddling our lungs with cancer — if we were a dauntless race of men with strong digestions — we would be able to devour life without the aid of these over-civilized devices.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To minimize my guilt at going to the pictures — to call this wanton pursuit of an effete pleasure by another name — I needed movie companions as drunkards need drinking partners. If I entered a cinema alone, God might plunge his arm through the roof of the auditorium booming in a stereophonic voice, "And you, Crisp, what are you doing here?" I would never have dared reply, "I’m just enjoying myself, Lord." I remembered too well what happened to Mr and Mrs Adam. A commissionaire with a flaming sword came and asked them to leave.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It would be impossible to get through the kind of life that I have known without accumulating a vast unused stockpile of rage. Retaliation, though, was a luxury I could never afford. On the physical level I was too feeble. On any other I was not rich enough. I never dared to be rude to anyone. I never knew that I might not need him later. Long after fantasies of sexual excess had ceased to torment me, my imagination was inflamed by lurid day-dreams of having my revenge on the world.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mass-murderers are simply people who have had ENOUGH.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An autobiography is obituary in serial form with the last installment missing.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We think we write definitively of those parts of our nature that are dead and therefore beyond change, but that which writes is still changing — still in doubt. 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 (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Bit by bit, I was becoming the almost acceptable face of homosexuality.”
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source