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I Asked A Girl Who Came From America To England, When I Was Only English, And She Admitted She Had Been To A Drama School. And I Said, "what Did They Teach You?" And She Said, "they Taught Me To Be A Candle Burning In An Empty Room." I'm Happy To Say She Was Laughing While She Said It, But She Meant It. I've Never Learned To Be A Candle Burning In An Empty Room. So I Go On The Screen, And I Say Whatever I'm Told To Say.

-Quentin Crisp

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I Asked A Girl

Quentin Crisp

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I Asked A Girl Who Came From America To England, When I Was Only English, And She Admitted She Had Been To A Drama School. And I Said, "what Did They Teach You?" And She Said, "they Taught Me To Be A Candle Burning In An Empty Room." I'm Happy To Say She Was Laughing While She Said It, But She Meant It. I've Never Learned To Be A Candle Burning In An Empty Room. So I Go On The Screen, And I Say Whatever I'm Told To Say.

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If You Truly Love Me, Kill The Bartender.

All America Is Much The Same.

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I've Never Not Been Famous.

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To Live In The Past Is To Miss Today's Opportunities And Tomorrow's Blessings.

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The War Between The Sexes Is The Only One In Which Both Sides Regularly Sleep With The Enemy.

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The Worst Part Of Being Gay In The Twentieth Century Is All That Damn Disco Music To Which One Has To Listen.

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I Never Say 'no' To Anything.

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People Are Not Heterosexual Or Homosexual, Just Sexual.

If I Have Any Talent At All, It Is Not For Doing But For Being.

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If At First You Don't Succeed, Failure May Be Your Style.

The World Was Very Feminine When I Was Young. And Now It's Very Masculine.

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Women Have Decided To Be People, Which Is A Great Mistake. Women Were Nicer Than People.

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Everybody Who's Been On Television More Than Once Wears In Public An Expression Of Fatuous Affability. Because You May Be Addressed At Any Moment By Somebody.

You Can't Be A Person And A Lady. If You're A Person, You Can Open The Damned Door Yourself.

I Have Come To Think That Both Sex And Politics Are A Mistake And That Any Attempt To Establish A Connection Between The Two Is The Greatest Error Of All.

I Don't Think I Have A Tragic Demeanor.

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.

The Law Is Simply Expediency Wearing A Long White Dress.

Most Men When They Make Up Their Faces, The Makeup Stands Forward, And Their Faces Are Behind.

I Have To Realise That As I Am Only English And Am Allowed To Live In America, I Have To Give Something In Return. And Since I Cannot Build A Hospital, Or Endow A University, I Can Only Give My Infinite Availability.

Los Angeles Is Just New York Lying Down.

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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.

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Euphemisms Are Unpleasant Truths Wearing Diplomatic Cologne.

Diplomatic Relations

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You Don't Have To Do Anything.

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I Don't Know How People Act. I've Never Understood That.

God, From Whose Territory I Had Withdrawn My Ambassadors At The Age Of Fourteen. It Had Become Obvious That He Was Never Going To Do A Thing I Said.

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No Effort Is Required To Define Or Even Attain Happiness, But Enormous Concentration Is Needed To Abandon Everything Else.

Style, In The Broadest Sense Of All, Is Consciousness. More Specifically It Is A Consistent Idiom Arising Spontaneously From The Personality But Deliberately Maintained.

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Exhibitionism Is Like A Drug. Hooked In Adolescence I Was Now Taking Doses So Massive They Would Have Killed A Novice.

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I Never Miss England.

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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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Michelangelo Worked From Within. He Described Not The Excitements Of Touching Or Seeing A Man But The Excitement Of Being Man.

Even Hooligans Marry, Though They Know That Marriage Is For A Little While. It Is Alimony That Is For Ever.

The Distinction Between Indoors And Outdoors, Which In England Is Usually So Marked, Was Temporarily Suspended In A Hot Gauzy Haze.

Sex Is The Last Refuge Of The Miserable.

To Lose Is Not Always Failure.

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In Manhattan, Every Flat Surface Is A Potential Stage And Every Inattentive Waiter An Unemployed, Possibly Unemployable, Actor.

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.

There Is No Need To Do Any Housework At All. After The First Four Years The Dirt Doesn't Get Any Worse.

Fashion Is A Way Of Not Having To Decide Who You Are. Style Is Deciding Who You Are And Being Able To Perpetuate It.

Happiness Is The Only Thing I Understand.

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 Happiest Moments In Any Affair Take Place After The Loved One Has Learned To Accommodate The Lover And Before The Maddening Personality Of Either Party Has Emerged Like A Jagged Rock From The Receding Tides Of Lust And Curiosity.

Is Not The Whole World A Vast House Of Assignation Of Which The Filing System Has Been Lost?

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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.

Exhibitionists Have No Friends, No Friends At All.

Posing Was The First Job I Did In Which I Understood What I Was Doing.

Manners Are A Way Of Getting What You Want Without Appearing To Be An Absolute Swine.

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I Stay In One Room, And It's Easier To Live There, To Control It, To Make It Warm. It Seems To Me A Convenient Way To Live, And It's Cheap.

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What Matters Is Not Whether You Put Your Fork Or Knife Together Because You've Finished Your Meal, Or Something Like That. What Matters Is That You Don't Offend People, Or Hurt Their Feelings By Mistake By Saying The Wrong Thing Or Doing The Wrong Thing.

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Believe In Fate, But Lean Forward Where Fate Can See You.

As A Test Of The Closeness Of Your Relationship With The World, Sex Could Never Be A Patch On Being Murdered. (that's When Someone Really Does Risk His Life For You.)

All This Cut-price Transcendentalism Does Not Prevent California From Being A Startlingly Physical State. This Becomes Most Obvious Where Los Angeles Saunters Down To The Sea. The Region Is Called Venice.

I Have Known Female Whores Who Spoke Very Bitterly Of Their Calling. "if They Don't Like My Face, They Can Put A Cushion Over It. I Know It's Not That They're Interested In." But To The Boys This Profession Never Seemed Shameful. It Was Their Daytime Occupations For Which They Felt The Need To Apologize. In Some Instances, These Were Lower Class Or Humdrum Or, Worst Of All, Unfeminine. At Least Whoring Was Never That.

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.

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."

Men Get Laid, But Women Get Screwed.

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Mireille Mathieu

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