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The Naked Civil Servant
Quentin Crisp
Top 10 Best Quotes
“If a man were to look over the fence on one side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his left had laid his garden path round a central lawn; and were to look over the fence on the other side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his right had laid his path down the middle of the lawn, and were then to lay his own garden path diagonally from one corner to the other, that man's soul would be lost. Originality is only to be praised when not prefaced by the look to right and left.”
“A fair share of anything is starvation diet to an egomaniac.”
“I learned very early in life that I was always going to need people more than they needed me.”
“Fear and hatred do not seem to find expression in tears.”
“What I wanted most of all was to use sex as a weapon to allure, subjugate, and, if possible, destroy the personality of others.”
“So black was the way ahead that my progress consisted of long periods of inert despondency punctuated by spasmodic lurches forward towards any small chink of light that I thought I saw ... As the years went by, it did not get lighter but I became accustomed to the dark.”
“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.”
“Without knowing it, I was acquiring that haughty bearing which is characteristic of so many eccentrics. What other expression would you expect to find on the face of anyone who knows that if he turns his head too quickly, he will see on the faces of others glares of stark terror or grimaces of hatred? Aloofness is the posture of self-defense.”
“Masturbation is not only an expression of self-regard: it is also the natural emotional outlet of those who, before anything has reared its ugly head, have already accepted as inevitable the wide gulf between their real futures and the expectations of their fantasies. The habit fitted snugly into my well-established world of make-believe.”
“Then my hostess said, "Oh, Denis (as my name was before I dyed it) never plays the part of a man.”
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Book Keywords:
darkness, originality, light, despondency, progress, sadness, creativity