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.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Crisp admits dropping youthful pretensions to avoid middle-aged ones, but it took time to stop pretending to know plays.
- In plain terms
- He stopped acting cultured as a young man but took years to stop faking knowledge as an older man.
- What can you take from it?
- Maturity means admitting what you don’t know.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- When did you stop pretending?
- Is faking knowledge common?
Another view
It assumes declining invitations shows maturity, which is narrow.
More from Quentin Crisp
To my disappointment I now realized that to know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.
Permalink to quote #6 I acquiesced in this on the grounds that the most anyone can expect from a holiday is a change of agony.
Permalink to quote #8 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.
Permalink to quote #5
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