Quentin Crisp (1908 – 1999)
Born Denis Charles Pratt, was an English writer, artist's model, actor and raconteur who was known for his memorable and insightful witticisms.
I became one of the stately homos of England.
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.
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!
Posing was the first job I did in which I understood what I was doing.
An autobiography is obituary in serial form with the last installment missing.
God, from whose territory I had withdrawn my ambassadors at the age of fourteen.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.
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.
'You talk for talking’s sake,' she hissed. I asked if that was bad. 'I mean it,' the girl replied. 'You talk for talking’s sake.' I had heard her the first time and had understood the words but not the contempt with which they were charged. 'Would you be equally annoyed,' I asked, 'if I danced for dancing’s sake? […] I should have said, 'Would you hate me if I lived for living’s sake?' This would have been the total question — the one to which a full reply could have saved the world.
When stripped, I looked less like "Il David" than a plucked chicken that died of myxomatosis.
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.
As someone remarked, when told the new atomic bombs would explode without a bang, "they can’t leave anything alone."
Exhibitionism is like a drug. Hooked in adolescence I was now taking doses so massive they would have killed a novice.
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.
I acquiesced in this on the grounds that the most anyone can expect from a holiday is a change of agony.
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.
Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave.
Even hooligans marry, though they know that marriage is for a little while. It is alimony that is for ever.
[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.
If I have any talent at all, it is not for doing but for being.
To my disappointment I now realized that to know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.