Quotessence
Home / Authors / Quentin S. Crisp Books
Quentin S. Crisp

Quentin S. Crisp Books

Author

Related Quotes

“There is a phase of melancholy—a phase that has sloughed all urgency—that seems to me always a revelation of that ancient, familiar thing, my true self. If there is anything in a person with which one may be in love, surely it can only ever be the self that such melancholy reveals. There are potent and austere traditions that teach us a true self that has no qualities, no atmosphere, and which thus could never be revealed by melancholia; some of these traditions maintain, in a tone that suggests resistance is folly, that there is no self at all. But such traditions are not native to my soul, and within my life they are new, though they are older than me in history. For me, the self revealed by melancholy is older and thus truer.”

SelfMelancholy
Book:The Little One: A Meditation
Create image

“As a movement (rather than a preference), the goal of antinatalism is that no humans should have children. What ambassadors, then, are we to send to the Brazilian Amazonian Pirahã people to persuade them to stop reproducing? According, at least, to Professor Daniel Everett, here is a people who have no knowledge of regret, depression or suicide. Are we to enlighten them in order to appease a group of discontented intellectuals in the first world? The Pirahã would appear to be one pocket of humanity to whom the sickness unto death does not apply, and this reveals a crack, which may grow, in the antinatalist edifice.”

WestColonialismAntinatalismModernity Is A Sickness
Author:Quentin S. Crisp
Create image

“Anyway, yes, telephones but not mobile phones, fish and chips still wrapped in actual newspaper and still with some kind of flavour, people visiting each other without having to consult their appointment diaries, not being able to record anything from the television; if you missed it you missed it - these were all the kinds of thing that made up the normality of the seventies.”

PeopleIfsKindMadeStillsAbleRecordsTelevisionPhonesFishesNewspapersTelephonesSeventiesChipsDiariesMobileVisitingAppointmentsNormalityMobile PhonesFlavourFish And Chips
Author:Quentin S. Crisp
Create image

“I don't know if Britain ever really achieved that much glamour. We had post-war austerity rather than post-war prosperity, and our cultural products of the time include some pretty dour kitchen-sink dramas of the A Kind of Loving variety. (This kind of film seems disillusioned with the sixties before they've even really begun.)”

IfsKnowsKindWarSeemsFilmProductsDramaProsperityVarietyPostsKitchenBritainSixtyGlamourDisillusionedAusterityPost WarKitchen Sinks
Author:Quentin S. Crisp
Create image

“I don't want to give too much away, but something horrible happens in 1977. That was also the year of the Queen's Silver Jubilee. I remember this jubilee. I remember receiving a commemorative coin from the school. I think it was a fifty pence piece. That was its monetary value, but it was not a normal fifty pence piece, and it would have been strange to try and use it in a shop.”

ThinkingWantGivingTryingYearsHas BeensUseHappensSchoolRememberValuesToo MuchPiecesStrangeNormalHorribleQueensFiftyShopsSilverReceivingCoinsMonetaryJubileeMonetary Value
Author:Quentin S. Crisp
Create image

“Perhaps I can also add something about the rural setting of Remember You're a One-Ball! The countryside is a place - in mythological and perhaps in very real terms - of mixed innocence and sin. It is seen by townsfolk as idyllic, lazy, free of urban crime and social problems. But those who grow up in the country can tell stories that often surprise those who grow up in the towns.”

I CanRealCountryStoriesProblemRememberSocialGrowsTermSinGrowing UpCrimeBallsTownsAddSurpriseSettingSettingsInnocenceLazyUrbanCountrysideRemember YouRemembers YouSocial ProblemsIdyllic
Author:Quentin S. Crisp
Create image