Quentin Crisp

“The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.”

“The idea that He would take his attention away from the universe in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds is just so unlikely I can't go along with it.”

“The British do not expect happiness. I had the impression, all the time that I lived there, that they do not want to be happy; they want to be right.”

“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.”

“It's no good running a pig farm badly for 30 years while saying, 'Really, I was meant to be a ballet dancer.' By then, pigs will be your style.”

“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 yo...”

“Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.”

“The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to plant their whole life in the hands of some other person. I would describe this method of searching for happiness as immature. De...”

“Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone - but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.”

“You fall out of your mother's womb, you crawl across open country under fire, and drop into your grave.”

“The poverty from which I have suffered could be diagnosed as 'Soho' poverty. It comes from having the airs and graces of a genius and no talent.”

“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.”

“Living en famille provides the strongest motives for rudeness combined with the maximum opportunity for displaying it.”

“Nothing more rapidly inclines a person to go into a monastery than reading a book on etiquette. There are so many trivial ways in which it is possible to commit some social sin.”

“There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; the second that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can...”

“The law is simply expediency wearing a long white dress.”

“Is not the whole world a vast house of assignation of which the filing system has been lost?”

“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 exha...”

“Abatement in the hostility of one's enemies must never be thought to signify they have been won over. It only means that one has ceased to constitute a threat.”

“There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.”