— Quentin Crisp, livre The Naked Civil Servant
I never understood music. It seemed to me to be the maximum amount of noise conveying the minimum amount of information.
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The Naked Civil Servant (Fonctionnaire du nu)
— Quentin Crisp, livre The Naked Civil Servant
The rest of the world in which I lived was still stumbling about in search of a weapon with which to exterminate this monster 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 Naked Civil Servant (Fonctionnaire du nu)
— Quentin Crisp, livre The Naked Civil Servant
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.
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The Naked Civil Servant (Fonctionnaire du nu)
— Quentin Crisp, livre The Naked Civil Servant
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.
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The Naked Civil Servant (Fonctionnaire du nu)
— Quentin Crisp, livre The Naked Civil Servant
When stripped, I looked less like "Il David" than a plucked chicken that died of myxomatosis.
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The Naked Civil Servant (Fonctionnaire du nu)
— Quentin Crisp, livre The Naked Civil Servant
Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave.
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The Naked Civil Servant (Fonctionnaire du nu)
— Quentin Crisp, livre The Naked Civil Servant
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."
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The Naked Civil Servant (Fonctionnaire du nu)
— Quentin Crisp, livre The Naked Civil Servant
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.
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The Naked Civil Servant (Fonctionnaire du nu)
— Quentin Crisp, livre The Naked Civil Servant
As someone remarked, when told the new atomic bombs would explode without a bang, "they can’t leave anything alone."
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The Naked Civil Servant (Fonctionnaire du nu)
— Quentin Crisp, livre The Naked Civil Servant
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.
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The Naked Civil Servant (Fonctionnaire du nu)
— Quentin Crisp, livre The Naked Civil Servant
Health consists of having the same diseases as one’s neighbours.
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The Naked Civil Servant (Fonctionnaire du nu)
— Quentin Crisp, livre The Naked Civil Servant
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!
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The Naked Civil Servant (Fonctionnaire du nu)
— Quentin Crisp, livre The Naked Civil Servant
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.
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The Naked Civil Servant (Fonctionnaire du nu)
— Quentin Crisp, livre The Naked Civil Servant
There was no need to do any housework at all. After four years the dirt doesn’t get any worse.
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The Naked Civil Servant (Fonctionnaire du nu)
— Quentin Crisp, livre The Naked Civil Servant
Mass-murderers are simply people who have had ENOUGH.
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The Naked Civil Servant (Fonctionnaire du nu)
— Quentin Crisp, livre The Naked Civil Servant
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.
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The Naked Civil Servant (Fonctionnaire du nu)
— Quentin Crisp, livre The Naked Civil Servant
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.
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The Naked Civil Servant (Fonctionnaire du nu)
— Quentin Crisp, livre The Naked Civil Servant
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.
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The Naked Civil Servant (Fonctionnaire du nu)
— Quentin Crisp, livre The Naked Civil Servant
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.
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The Naked Civil Servant (Fonctionnaire du nu)
— Quentin Crisp, livre The Naked Civil Servant
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.
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The Naked Civil Servant (Fonctionnaire du nu)
