Quotes from book
The Naked Civil Servant

The Naked Civil Servant
Quentin Crisp

The Naked Civil Servant is the 1968 autobiography of British gay icon Quentin Crisp, adapted into a 1975 film of the same name starring John Hurt.

Quentin Crisp photo

“If I have any talent at all, it is not for doing but for being.”

Quentin Crisp book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 18

Quentin Crisp photo

“I take it to be axiomatic that people are revolted by witnessing the shameless gratification of an appetite they do not share.”

Quentin Crisp book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 11

Quentin Crisp photo

“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 book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 27

Quentin Crisp photo

“Mass-murderers are simply people who have had ENOUGH.”

Quentin Crisp book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 29

Quentin Crisp photo

“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 book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 26

Quentin Crisp photo

“When stripped, I looked less like "Il David" than a plucked chicken that died of myxomatosis.”

Quentin Crisp book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 19

Quentin Crisp photo

“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 book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 16

Quentin Crisp photo

“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 book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 16

Quentin Crisp photo

“An autobiography is obituary in serial form with the last installment missing.”

Quentin Crisp book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 29

Quentin Crisp photo

“Health consists of having the same diseases as one’s neighbours.”

Quentin Crisp book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 21

Quentin Crisp photo

“Michelangelo worked from within. He described not the excitements of touching or seeing a man but the excitement of being Man.”

Quentin Crisp book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 19

Quentin Crisp photo

“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 book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 13

Quentin Crisp photo

“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 book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 3

Quentin Crisp photo

“I acquiesced in this on the grounds that the most anyone can expect from a holiday is a change of agony.”

Quentin Crisp book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 12

Quentin Crisp photo

“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 book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 15

Quentin Crisp photo

“I never understood music. It seemed to me to be the maximum amount of noise conveying the minimum amount of information.”

Quentin Crisp book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 27

Quentin Crisp photo

“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 book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 26

Quentin Crisp photo

“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 book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 27

Quentin Crisp photo

“To my disappointment I now realized that to know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.”

Quentin Crisp book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 9

Quentin Crisp photo

“[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 book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 27