Isherwood's Quotes

I put my genius into my life, not into my art. — Christopher Isherwood

Never mind. Never mind. In this brief life, one cannot always be counting the cost. — Christopher Isherwood

You're a nice boy," she chuckled harshly. "You must come round here one evening. I'll teach you something you didn't know before. — Christopher Isherwood

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

Bacon. Eggs. Toast. The same things Angie had made for her the past two years. Every day. Without fail. — E.E. Isherwood

No. Even now I can't altogether believe that any of this really happened ... — Christopher Isherwood

What is one ever doing anywhere? — Christopher Isherwood

It seemed to me then that to have published a book - any kind of book - would be the greatest possible happiness I could ask from life. — Christopher Isherwood

His boredom was like a nostalgia for the whole world. He was homesick for everywhere but here. — Christopher Isherwood

Despair is something horribly simple. — Christopher Isherwood

I doubt if one ever accepts a belief until one urgently needs it. — Christopher Isherwood

Horror is always aware of its cause; terror never is. That is precisely what makes terror terrifying. — Christopher Isherwood

To say time is evil because evil happens in time is like saying the ocean is a fish because fish happen in the ocean. — Christopher Isherwood

Most of the time, thank goodness, we suffer quite stupidly and unreflectingly, like the animals. — Christopher Isherwood

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

Sometimes awful things have their own beauty. — Christopher Isherwood

Feeling guilty's no reason for staying, or going. — Christopher Isherwood

The sea only drowns its lovers. — Christopher Isherwood

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

When you want anything badly, you always have to make some sacrifices. — Christopher Isherwood

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

The past is just something that's over. — Christopher Isherwood

The town is an advertisement for itself; none of its charms are left to the visitor's imagination. — Christopher Isherwood

How delightful it is to be here.(Gym) If only one could spend one's entire life in this state of easygoing physical democracy. — Christopher Isherwood

I'm very militant, you know, in a quite way. — Christopher Isherwood

There was nothing to be done with him and his kind - unless you were prepared to shoot them. — Christopher Isherwood

The pain of hunger beneath everything. At the end of all love-making, the dreamless sleep after the orgasm, which is like death. — Christopher Isherwood

(Only the very young are not ashamed to arrive panting.) — Christopher Isherwood

What it sees there isn't so much a face as the expression of a predicament. — Christopher Isherwood

This is a tightly planned little house. He often feels protected by its smallness; there is hardly room enough here to feel lonely. — Christopher Isherwood

Everything in the room is like that: unnecessarily solid, abnormally heavy and dangerously sharp. — Christopher Isherwood

I'm afraid, ha, ha, I find more inspiration in the Marquis de Sade. — Christopher Isherwood

The other day I made an epigram. I said, Anni's beauty is only sin-deep. I hope that's original? Is it? Please laugh. — Christopher Isherwood

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

I like hearing the sound of your voice, but I don't care a bit what you're saying. — Christopher Isherwood

She is sighing deeply now with sympathy and delight - the delight of an addict when someone else admits he's hooked, too. — Christopher Isherwood

The Quito telephone service is about as reliable as roulette. — Christopher Isherwood

George smiles to himself, with entire self-satisfaction. Yes, I am crazy, he thinks. That is my secret; my strength. — Christopher Isherwood

It's gone!" he repeats, almost ecstatically.
"That's because you let it go," Jacob tells him. — Christopher Isherwood

My heroes were never scientists. They were Graham Greene and Christopher Isherwood, you know, good writers. — James D. Watson

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

Experience isn't any use. And yet, in quite another way, it might be. If only we weren't all such miserable fools and prudes and cowards. — Christopher Isherwood

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

I have had an unpleasant feeling, such as one has in a dream, that I myself do not exist. — Christopher Isherwood

We live in stirring times- tea-stirring times. — Christopher Isherwood

She acted as a kind of rough and ready chemical reagent; in certain combinations she produced certain known results. — Christopher Isherwood

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

My perfect day would be to go on a picnic up Mt. Wilson with Christopher Isherwood, Greta Garbo, Aldous Huxley, and Bertrand Russell. — Janet Fitch

One should never write down or up to people, but out of yourself. — Christopher Isherwood

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

Like a long train which stops at every dingy little station, the winter dragged slowly past. — Christopher Isherwood

The paternalist is a sentimentalist at heart, and the sentimentalist is always potentially cruel. — Christopher Isherwood

That is what War is, I thought: two ships pass each other, and nobody waves his hand. — Christopher Isherwood

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

Even when they are geniuses in spite of it, their masterpieces are invariably warped. — Christopher Isherwood

All right, we've heard your liberty speech. Does that include us or doesn't it? — Christopher Isherwood

If you really have talent, you know, you'll go on writing - whatever people say to you. — Christopher Isherwood

A book can't read itself to you. It doesn't even know what it's about. — Christopher Isherwood

Isherwood did not so much find himself in Berlin as reinvent himself; Isherwood became a fiction, a work of art. — Ian Buruma

California is a tragic country - like Palestine, like every Promised Land. — Christopher Isherwood

I discovered Christopher Isherwood in college. His writing style is so direct, warm, and inclusive. — Claire Danes

After many a summer dies the swan. — Christopher Isherwood

The gramophone keeps reiterating a statement about life with which I do not agree. — Christopher Isherwood

In order to get the worst possible first impression of Los Angeles one should arrive there by bus, preferably in summer and on a Saturday night. — Christopher Isherwood

No one ever hates without a cause.... — Christopher Isherwood

It's possible to commit art and entertainment in the same moment. — Christopher Isherwood

Only those who are capable of silliness can be called truly intelligent. — Christopher Isherwood

I was very pink and young and English; and quite prepared for a Continent complete with poisonous drains, roast frogs, bedbugs and vice. — Christopher Isherwood

All the poetry in the world is in that face. — Christopher Isherwood

Beneath outer consciousness, two other beings, anonymous, impersonal, without labels, had met and recognized each other and clasped hands. — Christopher Isherwood

George feels flattered and excited ... He can't resist slipping into the role Kenny so temptingly offers him. — Christopher Isherwood

John Gielgud told us this story about Mae West. She was asked, 'Do you ever smoke after you've had sex?' She answered, 'I never looked. — Christopher Isherwood

I always look upon the capacity to save money as little short of miraculous. — Christopher Isherwood