Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You fall out of your mother's womb, you crawl across open country under fire, and drop into your grave.
It is true that in America I've become a national hero, but really I was a hopeless case, that was all.
There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.
For an introvert his environment is himself and can never be subject to startling or unforeseen change.
To my disappointment I now realized that to know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.
It's a strange situation, but people will pay your fare to get you to go and tell them how to be happy.
I am asked how to remain young, and I say 'Never, never work.' And that, of course, is the secret of it.
Nowadays people don't use face powder; they say it dries the skin. But I makeup in the old-fashioned way.
The curiosity of the neighbors about you, is a tribute to your individuality, and you should encourage it
If you live in America, you don't have to work. You can just drift along in the smiling and nodding racket.
Even hooligans marry, though they know that marriage is for a little while. It is alimony that is for ever.
That's the only sense in which I've been lucky: I have the kind of face to which cosmetics could be applied.
Other-cheekism is not only a way of purifying the soul, it is also part of every weak person's survival kit.
The trouble with European cities is that they are drenched in their history, almost all of which is terrible.
The worst part of being gay in the twentieth century is all that damn disco music to which one has to listen.
Quentin Crisp (to handsome young man on the street): "What's the matter, sexy? Don't you like dehydrated fruit?
Nothing shortens a journey so pleasantly as an account of misfortunes at which the hearer is permitted to laugh.
Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses.
In Manhattan, when you're out of the front door, you're on, and you have to be ready to smile and speak to people.
If one is not going to take the necessary precautions to avoid having parents, one must undertake to bring them up.
As someone remarked, when told the new atomic bombs would explode without a bang, "they can't leave anything alone."
Fashion is a way of not having to decide who you are. Style is deciding who you are and being able to perpetuate it.
I have to work in England, but here in America you don't have to work. You can sort of enter the profession of being.
Living en famille provides the strongest motives for rudeness combined with the maximum opportunity for displaying it.
Exhibitionism is like a drug. Hooked in adolescence I was now taking doses so massive they would have killed a novice.
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.
Every day someone notices me and waves to me, or stops and speaks to me, or asks me for an autograph, or photographs me.
I never understood music. It seemed to me to be the maximum amount of noise conveying the minimum amount of information.
In England, the system is benign and the people are hostile. In America, the people are friendlyand the system is brutal!
Vice is its own reward. It is virtue which, if it is to be marketed with consumer appeal, must carry Green Shield stamps.
No effort is required to define or even attain happiness, but enormous concentration is needed to abandon everything else.
Muddled syntax is the outward and audible sign of confused minds, and the misuse of grammar the result of illogical thinking.
What better proof of love can there be than money? A ten-shilling note shows incontrovertibly just how mad about you a man is.
Michelangelo worked from within. He described not the excitements of touching or seeing a man but the excitement of being Man.
I take it to be axiomatic that people are revolted by witnessing the shameless gratification of an appetite they do not share.
In Manhattan, every flat surface is a potential stage and every inattentive waiter an unemployed, possibly unemployable, actor.
I'm happy. I don't ever have to pay anything, and I don't ever have to wash the dishes, and I don't ever have to behave nicely.
What I wanted most of all was to use sex as a weapon to allure, subjugate, and, if possible, destroy the personality of others.
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.
The distinction between indoors and outdoors, which in England is usually so marked, was temporarily suspended in a hot gauzy haze.
I am told that you regret not what you did but what you didn't do; and so that's why I do everything, so as not to have any regrets.
It's written into the Constitution that you're allowed to pursue happiness. In England it would be considered a frivolous objective.
The court was not previously aware of the prisoner's many accomplishments. In view of these, we see fit to impose the death penalty.
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."
Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone - but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.
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.
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.
If I were God - and I never understand why I'm not - I should say, "Shop around, I don't think you'll find a better bargain than here."
As far as I know, you can fancy someone, you can enjoy their company or you can wish them well. But what being in love is, I don't know.
Why get married? For human beings, marriage is such an unnatural state. If you want monogamy, it has been said, you should marry a swan.