Photographer Frederike de Jonge Shares Her Captured Images Of The Author, Actor and Iconic Personality
The Wit and Wisdom of Quentin Crisp (1908-1999)
As it has been over a decade since the passing of Quentin Crisp, I want to pay tribute by re-capturing his essence through his words of wisdom, wit and other observations on society...
Frederike de Jonge
“Those who once inhabited the suburbs of human contempt find that without changing their address they eventually live in the metropolis. In my case this took very long.” - The Naked Civil Servant (1968)
“My crime was not being a homosexual, my crime was being an effeminate man. They don't like effeminate women either.”
"I tried to make it clear that it's possible to be of one sex physically and of another mentally or emotionally... and that's what I told the world, that's what they could see and that annoyed them very much... but I don't know why.”
"There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse."
“Nothing more rapidly inclines a person to go into a monastery than reading a book on etiquette. There are so many trivial ways in which it is possible to commit some social sin.”
"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 and that's what happened to me."
“Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.”
“Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are.”
“The formula for achieving a successful relationship is simple: you should treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.”
“The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.”
“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.”
“Decency must be an even more exhausting state to maintain than its opposite. Those who succeed seem to need a stupefying amount of sleep.”
“I'm in the profession of being.”
Mail to a friendCOMMENTS
- On July 14 At 21:29 -SkyofQtown- said
Happy Bastille Day! Well I think we all could well extol the sweet virtues of the sharp Wit however kind Wisdom of the late Quentin Crisp!
I love the simple yet deep, whose meaning counts very hard - "I Am In The Profession Of Being!"
Well, so am I and so are everyone of us strong enough to be real and true to our own selves individually and also brave enough to articulate our own personal meaning with our Life, our expression of ourselves in the world.
All life demands "Give and Take" exchanges! Quentin Crisp lights up a fire within us all - reminding us to find our own beauty, our own personal Art first so that we may learn and empower ourselves enough to find the beauty, the art of other hearts, of other places, of other times, of the world and share...
Quentin Crisp was an Interpreter of Life as he translated people, places and experiences into the wonderful work that he gave us all throughout his tenure in the flesh.
Meaning always rules!!!
Gina - thank you for such a beautiful and meaningful article!
