You fall out of your mother's womb, you crawl across open country under fire, and drop into your grave.
Interpretation
Life is a challenging journey filled with struggles from birth to death.
Quentin Crisp's quote reflects on the harsh realities of life, portraying it as a battle that begins at birth and continues until oneβs death. It emphasizes the inevitability of facing challenges and the often tumultuous nature of human existence, suggesting that life is fraught with difficulties that one must navigate throughout their time on Earth.
In practice
In a motivational speech about resilience, this quote illustrates the struggle we all face.
The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to plant their whole life in the hands of some other person. I would describe this method of searching for happiness as immature. Development of character consists solely in moving toward self-sufficiency.
What would you be like if you were the only person in the world? If you want to be truly happy you must be that person.
The search for a life-style involves a journey to the interior. This is not altogether a pleasant experience, because you not only have to take stock of what you consider your assets but you also have to take a long look at what your friends call βthe trouble with you.β Nevertheless, the journey is worth making.
If you describe things as better than they are, you are considered to be a romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you will be called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you will be thought of as a satirist.
The flagrantly gay Quentin Crisp dealt with homophobic bullying by refusing to bow to its onslaught. His number listed in the phone directory, he responded to derogatory remarks accompanied with a stated intent to kill him by asking, "Would you like to make an appointment?"
It is explained that all relationships require a little give and take. This is untrue. Any partnership demands that we give and give and give and at the last, as we flop into our graves exhausted, we are told that we didn't give enough.
Criticism, though dignified from the earliest ages by the labours of men eminent for knowledge and sagacity, has not yet attained the certainty and stability of science.
We ought not to demonize a single gang member, and we ought not to romanticize a single gang.
The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
Many could forgo heavy meals, a full wardrobe, a fine house, etcetera. It is the ego they cannot forgo.
Everyone is the other and no one is himself.
She would have liked not to be alive, or to be always asleep.
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