Christopher Isherwood Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• His life has been lived, so far, within narrow limits and he is quite naïve about most kinds of experience; he fears it and yet is wildly eager for it. To reassure himself, he converts it into epic myth as fast as it happens. He is forever play-acting.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Epic, Play, Forever

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

  5 Copy quote

• I am alive, he says to himself, I am alive! And life energy surges hotly through him, and delight, and appetite. How good to be in a body - even this old beat-up carcass - that still has warm blood and live semen and rich marrow and wholesome flesh!

  Christopher Isherwood

  Blood, Energy, Delight

  Christopher Isherwood (1964). “A single man”

  4 Copy quote

• I must honor those who fight of their own free will, he said to himself. And I must try to imitate their courage by following my path as a pacifist, wherever it takes me.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Fighting, Honor, Trying

  "Christopher and His Kind". Book by Christopher Isherwood, p. 336, 1976.

  5 Copy quote

• I'm horrified to find, as I look at these diaries of twenty-five years ago or more, that I don't remember who the people were. "Bill and Tony were constantly in and out. We went to La Jolla" - or something. I haven't the bluest idea who they were!

  Christopher Isherwood

  Years, Ideas, People

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

  5 Copy quote

• I certainly should have,' he agrees, smiling and thinking what an absurd and universally-accepted bit of nonsense it is, that your best friends must necessarily be the ones who best understand you. As if there weren't far too much understanding in the world already; above all, that understanding between lovers, celebrated in song and story, which is actually such torture that no two of them can bear it without frequent separations or fights.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Song, Fighting, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• As they embrace, she kisses him full on the mouth. And suddenly sticks her tongue right in. She has done this before, often. It’s one of those drunken long shots which just might, at least theoretically, once in ten thousand tries, throw a relationship right out of its orbit and send it whizzing off on another. Do women ever stop trying? No. But, because they never stop, they learn to be good losers.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Kissing, Long, Trying

  9 Copy quote

• I'm very militant, you know, in a quite way.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Way, Knows, Militant

  4 Copy quote

• In ten minutes they will have arrived on campus. George will have to be George; the George they have named and will recognise. So now he consciously applies himself to thinking their thoughts, getting into their mood. With the skill of a veteran, he rapidly puts on the psychological makeup for this role he must play.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Makeup, Thinking, Play

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

  4 Copy quote

• I feel it's so easy to condemn this country [the United States]; but they don't understand that this is where the mistakes are being made - and made first, so that we're going to get the answers first.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Country, Mistake, United States

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

  4 Copy quote

• The Quito telephone service is about as reliable as roulette.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Roulette, Telephones

  Christopher Isherwood (1949). “The Condor and the Cows: A South American Travel-diary”

  4 Copy quote

• The Nazis were not right to hate the Jews. But their hating of Jews was not without a cause. No one ever hates without a cause.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Hate, Causes, Nazi

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

  4 Copy quote

• These books have not made George nobler or better or more truly wise. It is just that he likes listening to their voices, the one or the other, acording to his mood. He misuses them quite ruthlessly - despite the respectful way he has to talk about them in public - to put him to bed, to take his mind off the hands of the clock, to relax the nagging of his pyloric spasm, to gossip him out of his melancholy, to trigger the conditioned reflexes of his colon.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Wise, Book, Hands

  4 Copy quote

• Hollywood's two polar types are the cynically drunken writer aggressively nursing a ten-year-old reputation and the theatrically self-conscious hermit who strides the boulevard in sandals, home-made shorts and a prophetic beard, muttering against the Age of the Machines.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Home, Nursing, Self

  Christopher Isherwood (1966). “Exhumations: Stories, Articles, Verses”

  7 Copy quote

• But your book is wrong, Mrs. Strunk, says George, when it tells you that Jim is the substitute I found for a real son, a real kid brother, a real husband, a real wife. Jim wasn't a substitute for anything. And there is no substitute for Jim, if you'll forgive my saying so, anywhere.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Brother, Husband, Real

  Christopher Isherwood (1964). “A single man”

  4 Copy quote

• Lois and Alexander are by far the most beautiful creatures in the class; their beauty is like the beauty of plants, seemingly untroubled by vanity, anxiety or effort.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Beautiful, Vanity, Class

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

  4 Copy quote

• You see, Kenny, there are some things you don't even know you know, until you're asked.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Kenny, Knows

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

  4 Copy quote

• I seldom try to probe the mystery of my sloth. I have squandered a gigantic fortune of work hours... seems likely that I'll go on squandering till the very end.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Sloth, Trying, Goes On

  Christopher Isherwood, Don Bachardy (1983). “October”, London : Methuen

  7 Copy quote

• For a few minutes, maybe, life lingers in the tissues of some outlying regions of the body. Then, one by one, the lights go out and there is total blackness. And ifsome part of the non—entity we called George has indeed been absent at this moment of terminal shock, away out there on the deep water, then it will return to find itself homeless.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Light, Deep Water, Tissues

  "A Single Man".

  4 Copy quote

• At one campus where I was lecturing, I asked a friend, "How many of my colleagues know I'm gay?" He answered, "All of them." I wasn't surprised. But, just the same, it was kind of spooky, because not one of them had ever given me the faintest sign that he or she knew. If I had spoken about it myself, most of them would have felt it was in bad taste.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Gay, Taste, Kind

  Christopher Isherwood, James J. Berg, Chris Freeman (2001). “Conversations with Christopher Isherwood”, p.108, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  4 Copy quote

Page 3 of 3

First

← Prev

1

2

3

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin