# Quentin Crisp

Quentin Crisp (25 décembre 1908 - 21 novembre 1999), né Denis Charles Pratt, était un écrivain, mannequin, acteur et conteur britannique connu pour son humour intellectuel fin et profond. Il est devenu une icône gay dans les années 1970 après que la publication de ses mémoires, Fonctionnaire du nu, ait porté à l'attention du public son exhibitionnisme provocant et son refus durable de dissimuler son homosexualité.

## The Naked Civil Servant (Fonctionnaire du nu)

* (en) Keeping up with the Joneses was a full-time job with my mother and father. It was not until many years later when I lived alone that I realized how much cheaper it was to drag the Joneses down to my level.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 2-3
* (en) The rest of the world in which I lived was still stumbling about in search of a weapon with which to exterminate this monster whose shape and size were not yet known or even guessed at. It was thought to be Greek in origin, smaller than socialism but more deadly, especially to children.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 19
* (en) Exhibitionism is like a drug. Hooked in adolescence I was now taking doses so massive they would have killed a novice.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 43
* (en) Sometimes I wore a fringe so deep it obscured the way ahead. This hardly mattered. There were always others to look where I was going.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 43-4
* (en) To my disappointment I now realized that to know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 74
* (en) I started to shed the monstrous aesthetic affectation of my youth so as to make room for the monstrous philistine postures of middle age, but it was some years before I was bold enough to decline an invitation to "Hamlet" on the grounds that I knew who won.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 88-89
* (en) I acquiesced in this on the grounds that the most anyone can expect from a holiday is a change of agony.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 89
* (en) As someone remarked, when told the new atomic bombs would explode without a bang, "they can’t leave anything alone."
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 91
* (en) All liaisons between homosexuals are conducted as though they were between a chorus girl and a bishop. In some cases both parties think they are bishops.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 97
* (en) There was no need to do any housework at all. After four years the dirt doesn’t get any worse.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 102
* (en) I was amazed to receive later a substantial sum for sitting in my room and talking about myself. If only I could get some of the back pay!
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 103
* (en) "You'll never be wanted," he said, and thrust at me a smaller piece of paper. This described me as being incapable of being graded in grades A, B, etc., because I suffered from sexual perversion. When the story of my disgrace became one of the contemporary fables of Chelsea, a certain Miss Marshall said, "I don't much care for the expression 'suffering from.' Shouldn't it be 'glorying in'?"
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 110
* (en) God, from whose territory I had withdrawn my ambassadors at the age of fourteen. It had become obvious that he was never going to do a thing I said.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 111
* (en) The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to place their entire life in the hands of some other person. For this purpose they frequently choose someone who doesn’t even want the beastly thing.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 112
* (en) Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 121
* (en) If I have any talent at all, it is not for doing but for being.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 121
* (en) Posing was the first job I did in which I understood what I was doing.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 124
* (en) When stripped, I looked less like "Il David" than a plucked chicken that died of myxomatosis.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 125
* (en) The young always have the same problem — how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this problem by defying their elders and copying each other.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 126
* (en) I found that I had become so spinsterish that I was made neurotic not only by my life of domesticity but by the slightest derangement of my room. I would burst into a fit of weeping if the kettle was not facing due east.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 140-1
* (en) Health consists of having the same diseases as one’s neighbours.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 143
* (en) I now know that if you describe things as better as they are, you are considered to be romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you are called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you are called a satirist.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 169
* (en) The simplest comment on my book came from my ballet teacher. She said, "I wish you hadn’t made every line funny. It’s so depressing."
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 178
* (en) He explained to me that he wanted a simple boy-meets-girl story with lyrics. This I felt was quite beyond my capabilities. I did not know any boys who met girls.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 195
* (en) I never understood music. It seemed to me to be the maximum amount of noise conveying the minimum amount of information.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 195
* (en) To read a novel or see a play was to drink life through a straw — to smoke it through a filter-tip. If we were not afraid of blackening our teeth or riddling our lungs with cancer — if we were a dauntless race of men with strong digestions — we would be able to devour life without the aid of these over-civilized devices.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 196
* (en) To minimize my guilt at going to the pictures... I needed movie companions as drunkards need drinking partners. If I entered a cinema alone, God might plunge his arm through the roof of the auditorium booming in a stereophonic voice, "And you, Crisp, what are you doing here?" I would never have dared reply, "I’m just enjoying myself, Lord." I remembered too well what happened to Mr and Mrs Adam. A commissionaire with a flaming sword came and asked them to leave.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 196-7
* (en) It would be impossible to get through the kind of life that I have known without accumulating a vast unused stockpile of rage. Retaliation, though, was a luxury I could never afford. On the physical level I was too feeble. On any other I was not rich enough. I never dared to be rude to anyone. I never knew that I might not need him later. Long after fantasies of sexual excess had ceased to torment me, my imagination was inflamed by lurid day-dreams of having my revenge on the world.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 208
* (en) Mass-murderers are simply people who have had ENOUGH.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 208
* (en) An autobiography is obituary in serial form with the last installment missing.
* The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, éd. Penguin, 1968 (1997 ed.), p. 212
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