Quentin S. Crisp Quotes - Page 2

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• I feel a little as if the Buddhism is creeping back, but I mention all this simply in order to illustrate that there is, in my life, a fundamental sense of conflict between something that I am calling 'Buddhism' and my creative impulse.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Buddhism, Order, Creative

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

  4 Copy quote

• I began researching and writing what I intended as a book-length essay entitled Fascination and Liberation, exploring the question of whether there is a conflict between creativity and the Eastern form of enlightenment. I don't know if I'll ever finish that essay, because I had an experience, after I'd written two or three chapters, in which it seemed to me that my psychic antibodies decisively rejected Buddhism. Interestingly, the rejection felt as if it happened in Zen terms.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Book, Writing, Creativity

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

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• People may wish to say that the thing that is in conflict with my creativity is not Buddhism - that's fine.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Creativity, Buddhism, People

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

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• I went on a meditation retreat. In 10 or so days, I spent about a hundred hours meditating, observing 'noble silence' the whole time, and so on. This was an interesting experience, which has had some beneficial effects for me.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Interesting, Meditation, Silence

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

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• I understand that words can mean different things to different people, and, further, that people can have different relationships with complex abstract entities such as Buddhism. To me, anyway, the entity in my life that conflicts with my creativity is Buddhism.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Mean, Creativity, Buddhism

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

  4 Copy quote

• Nonetheless, I'm not sure this entirely accounts for my Buddhist voice, which tells me forever to give up writing, to give up on relationships, simply to give up. Whatever it is, it doesn't seem to me to be the voice of innocence.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Buddhist, Giving Up, Writing

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

  4 Copy quote

• I have a sense of them being Easter religions, for some reason. Christianity, of course, is a mystery religion, too, and I believe that Arthur Machen was one of those especially interested in the link between the pagan mysteries and the Christian ones. So, my experience was also a Machenesque experience.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Christian, Easter, Believe

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

  4 Copy quote

• It's true that Eastern philosophy and religion were not unknown to me as a child, since my father has explored much in that area, and written books more or less in that area, too.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Children, Father, Philosophy

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

  4 Copy quote

• I do have a muse. I am not sure how to describe her. She can be very elusive. She was born in England but has Mediterranean ancestry.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  England, Ancestry, Muse

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

  4 Copy quote

• 1977 was also, of course, the year that Derek Jarman made his iconoclastic film Jubilee, which was so much part of the punk movement.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Years, Movement, Jubilee

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

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• I think I still have [commemorative coin ] somewhere. Why was this given to me? I think every child in the country must have received one [ from Queen's Silver Jubilee]. That's the last time that I recall something of an innocent, more-or-less unquestioning monarchist patriotism in Britain.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Country, Queens, Children

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

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• 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.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Queens, School, Thinking

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

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• I've drifted in and out of vegetarianism for years.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Vegetarianism, Years

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

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• I don't believe in sexual love.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Believe, Don't Believe

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

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• In the meditation, of course, the question is repeated and repeated until you run out of answers - or so I hear.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Running, Meditation, Answers

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

  4 Copy quote

• I grew up with tarot cards and the reading of tea leaves.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Reading, Tea Leaves, Tarot

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

  12 Copy quote

• I was in just the right generation to have taken feminism seriously by osmosis - also the generation when the breakdown of the family really began and for whom The Smiths were something new and essential.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Taken, Osmosis, Feminism

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

  4 Copy quote

• I would say that, apart from being a writer, I have also always been very conscious of the idea of a 'world elsewhere'.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Ideas, World, Conscious

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

  4 Copy quote

• When we fail to live up to our ideals, for instance, we might begin to wonder who we are - most people are aware of a discrepancy, I think. There are idiosyncrasies and foibles, but we're not sure if these are essential. Some people think they are the most essential things of all.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Thinking, People, Essentials

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

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• The quality of that 'who I am', is what I hope comes out in the writing.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Writing, Who I Am, Quality

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

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• This strong sense of who I am that I've always had, since I was very young, is what makes me write.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Strong, Writing, Who I Am

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

  4 Copy quote

• The weird thing is, I'm not entirely sure that I am meant to think that such a gift is who I am according to the philosophy underlying Vedanta. But I have long been stubborn like that, for some reason. It's a gift, as I say.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Philosophy, Thinking, Who I Am

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

  4 Copy quote

• People often refer to a creative ability as a 'gift', and, of course, it is, in that, if I had sat down and logically tried to work out who I was and what I should do, I would never have come up with the idea of writing. It was already there, gratis, a given - a gift.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Writing, Ideas, People

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

  4 Copy quote

• More or less the first thing that comes into my head is that some people are always looking for what they want to do in life and never finding it. I'm not one of those people. It has been very obvious to me from an early age who I am, and this has been tied up with creativity, and, specifically, with writing.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Writing, Creativity, Who I Am

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

  4 Copy quote

• I seem to be less depressed but also less hopeful now in my thirties. My widow's peak bothers me. I think a lot about the end of the human race. And so on.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Thinking, Race, Hopeful

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

  4 Copy quote

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