Quentin Crisp Quotes
When I was young, I don't know how, I spent all my time in the presence of married women telling me their troubles. And when I said 'Why did you marry?' they said, 'Oh I married to get away from home.' And when I said, 'And why don't you leave him?' they gave the saddest answer in the world: they said, 'Where would I go?' So they stayed with men they didn't like because they had nowhere to go.
Crisp, Quentin. Resident Alien: The New York Diaries. HarperCollins, 1996.
Quentin Crisp (born Denis Charles Pratt; 21 November 1999) was an English writer, raconteur and actor. From a conventional suburban background, Crisp wore make-up and painted his nails. During his teen years he worked briefly as a rent boy. He then spent thirty years as a professional model for life-classes in art colleges. The interviews he gave about his unusual life attracted increasing public curiosity and he was soon sought after for his very personal views on social manners and the cultivating of style. His one-man stage show was a long-running hit both in Britain and America and he also appeared in films and on T.V. Crisp defied convention by criticising both gay liberation and Diana, Princess of Wales.