Christopher Isherwood Quotes

Quotes about:

• We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Philosophy, Philosophical, World

  59 Copy quote

• A few times in my life I've had moments of absolute clarity, when for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp. And the world seems so fresh as though it had all just come into existence. I can never make these moments last. I cling to them, but like everything, they fade. I have lived my life on these moments. They pull me back to the present, and I realize that everything is exactly the way it was meant to be.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Thinking, Silence, Noise

  "Fictional character: George". "A Single Man", www.imdb.com. 2009.

  55 Copy quote

• Only those who are capable of silliness can be called truly intelligent.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Intelligent, Silliness, Capable

  Christopher Isherwood, James J. Berg, Chris Freeman (2001). “Conversations with Christopher Isherwood”, p.171, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  30 Copy quote

• Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique, and not too much imagination.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Funny, Life, Witty

  Christopher Isherwood (1987). “The Wishing Tree: Christopher Isherwood on Mystical Religion”, Vedanta Press

  100 Copy quote

• By helping yourself, you are helping humankind. By helping humankind, you are helping yourself. That's the law of all spiritual progress.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Spiritual, Law, Progress

  30 Copy quote

• I doubt if one ever accepts a belief until one urgently needs it.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Doubt, Needs, Belief

  "Christopher and His Kind". Book by Christopher Isherwood, p. 306, 1976.

  7 Copy quote

• Sometimes awful things have their own beauty.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Awful, Sometimes, Single Man

  25 Copy quote

• A minority is only thought of as a minority when it constitutes some kind of threat to the majority, real or imaginary. And no threat is ever quite imaginary.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Real, Majority, Minorities

  Christopher Isherwood, Don Bachardy, James P. White (1989). “Where Joy Resides: An Isherwood Reader”, Vintage

  3 Copy quote

• I am a camera, with its shutter open. Someday, all of this will be developed, printed, fixed.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Cameras, Someday, Fixed

  14 Copy quote

• I'm like a book you have to read. A book can't read itself to you. It doesn't even know what it's about. I don't know what I'm about.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Book, Knows

  Christopher Isherwood (2013). “A Single Man: A Novel”, p.129, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  8 Copy quote

• We live in stirring times- tea-stirring times.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Tea, Stirring

  Christopher Isherwood (2008). “The Berlin Stories”, p.18, New Directions Publishing

  12 Copy quote

• No one ever hates without a cause.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Hate, Causes

  Christopher Isherwood (2013). “A Single Man: A Novel”, p.49, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• Bad writing is bad not just because the language is humdrum, but the quality of the observation is so poor.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Writing, Quality, Language

  18 Copy quote

• Think of two people, living together day after day, year after year, in this small space, standing elbow to elbow cooking at the same small stove, squeezing past each other on the narrow stairs, shaving in front of the same small bathroom mirror, constantly jogging, jostling, bumping against each other’s bodies by mistake or on purpose, sensually, aggressively, awkwardly, impatiently, in rage or in love – think what deep though invisible tracks they must leave, everywhere, behind them!

  Christopher Isherwood

  Mistake, Past, Thinking

  Christopher Isherwood, Don Bachardy, James P. White (1989). “Where Joy Resides: An Isherwood Reader”, Vintage

  21 Copy quote

• The sea only drowns its lovers.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Sea, Lovers

  15 Copy quote

• Every writer has certain subjects that they write about again and again, and . . . most people's books are just variations on certain themes.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Book, Writing, People

  3 Copy quote

• One should never write down or up to people, but out of yourself.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Writing, People, Should

  6 Copy quote

• The more I think about myself, the more I'm persuaded that, as a person, I really don't exist. That is one of the reasons why I can't believe in any orthodox religion: I cannot believe in my own soul. No, I am a chemical compound, conditioned by environment and education. My "character" is simply a repertoire of acquired tricks, my conversation a repertoire of adaptations and echoes, my "feelings" are dictated by purely physical, external stimuli.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Atheist, Believe, Character

  19 Copy quote

• It seems to me that the real clue to your sexual orientation lies in your romantic feelings rather than your sexual feelings. If you are really gay, you are able to fall in love with a man, not just enjoy sex with him.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Falling In Love, Sex, Real

  Interview with Winston Leyland on 1973. "Conversations with Christopher Isherwood". Book edited by James J. Berg and Chris Freeman, p. 106, 2001.

  13 Copy quote

• If it’s going to be a world with no time for sentiment, it’s not a world that I want to live in.

  Christopher Isherwood

  World, Want, Single Man

  9 Copy quote

• I often feel that worse than the most fiendish Nazis were those Germans who went along with the persecution of the Jews not because they really disliked them but because it was the thing.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Nazi, Persecution, Jew

  "Christopher Isherwood, The Art of Fiction No. 49". Interview with W.I. Scobie, www.theparisreview.org. Spring 1974.

  14 Copy quote

• I'll bet Shakespeare compromised himself a lot; anybody who's in the entertainment industry does to some extent.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Doe, Entertainment, Entertainment Industry

  "Christopher Isherwood, The Art of Fiction No. 49". Interview with W.I. Scobie, www.theparisreview.org. Spring 1974.

  19 Copy quote

• What irritates me is the bland way people go around saying, 'Oh, our attitude has changed. We don't dislike these people any more.' But by the strangest coincidence, they haven't taken away the injustice; the laws are still on the books.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Attitude, Book, Taken

  21 Copy quote

• The past is just something that's over.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Past

  8 Copy quote

• Berlin is a skeleton which aches in the cold: it is my own skeleton aching. I feel in my bones the sharp ache of the frost in the girders of the overhead railway, in the iron-work of balconies, in bridges, tramlines, lamp-standards, latrines. The iron throbs and shrinks, the stone and the bricks ache dully, the plaster is numb.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Skeletons, Bridges, Iron

  Christopher Isherwood (1963). “The Berlin Stories: The Last of Mr. Norris [and] Goodbye to Berlin”, p.186, New Directions Publishing

  3 Copy quote

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