Quentin Crisp: I started to shed the monstrous aesthetic affectation o...

I don't think you can really be proud of being gay because it isn't something you've done. You can only be proud of not being ashamed.

Quentin Crisp

gay done thinking

Neither look forward where there is doubt nor backward where there is regret. Look inward and ask not if there is anything outside you want, but whether there is anything inside that you have not yet unpacked.

Quentin Crisp

regret doubt want

Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are.

Quentin Crisp

being-yourself sad fashion

When I was young, I and the whole world thought that all homosexuals were effeminate. And of course they're not. You can just see which people are effeminate; that's the only difference. So, I became a prototype of the effeminate man, because I was conspicuously effeminate. But camp is not something I do, it's something I am.

Quentin Crisp

differences men people

Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.

Quentin Crisp

dignity levels inspirational

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.

Quentin Crisp

realist ifs writing

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.

Quentin Crisp

people looks art

Believe in fate, but lean forward where fate can see you.

Quentin Crisp

fate choices believe

Mainstream people dislike homosexuality because they can't help concentrating on what homosexual men do to one another. And when you contemplate what people do, you think of yourself doing it. And they don't like that. That's the famous joke: I don't like peas, and I'm glad I don't like them, because if I liked them I would eat them and I hate them.

Quentin Crisp

hate men thinking

The ... problem that confronts homosexuals is that they set out to win the love of a "real" man. If they succeed, they fail. A man who "goes with" other men is not what they would call a real man. The conundrum is incapable of resolution, but that does not make homosexuals give it up.

Quentin Crisp

real winning men

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.

Quentin Crisp

demand relationship giving

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.

Quentin Crisp

destiny love sex

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. Development of character consists solely in moving toward self-sufficiency.

Quentin Crisp

success character moving

What would you be like if you were the only person in the world? If you want to be truly happy you must be that person.

Quentin Crisp

lgbt want inspirational

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

style able fashion

When I was young, we thought that Oscar Wilde was a great nobleman who had thrown his life away for love. Nothing could be less true. He slept with East Enders who were procured for him by Lord Alfred Douglas. He knew them only 'in Braille' - the curtains were never drawn back in the rooms in Oxford where he met those boys. It was the most sordid life you can imagine. And he was bleating about love and dragging the fair name of Mr. Plato into the trial - after a life like that?

Quentin Crisp

plato names boys

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.

Quentin Crisp

copying teenage parent

No effort is required to define or even attain happiness, but enormous concentration is needed to abandon everything else.

Quentin Crisp

enormous effort happiness

To live in the past is to miss today's opportunities and tomorrow's blessings.

Quentin Crisp

blessing opportunity past

When asked, 'Shall I tell my mother I'm gay?', I reply, 'Never tell your mother anything.

Quentin Crisp

gay mother

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.