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Someone has to ask you a question, George continues meaningly, before you can answer it. But it's so seldom you find anyone who'll ask the right questions. Most people aren't that much interested.

Christopher Isherwood

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Christopher Isherwood
Age: 81 †
Born: 1904
Born: August 26
Died: 1986
Died: January 4
Autobiographer
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
County Palatine of Chester
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood
Answers
Continues
Asks
Seldom
Anyone
George
Someone
Questions
Find
Answer
Right
Aren
Much
Interested
People
Question

More quotes by Christopher Isherwood

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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
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Waking up begins with saying am and now. That which has awoken then lies for a while staring up at the ceiling and down into itself until it has recognized I, and therefrom deduced I am, I am now. Here comes next, and is at least negatively reassuring because here, this morning, is where it has expected to find itself: what’s called at home.
Christopher Isherwood
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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
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Bad writing is bad not just because the language is humdrum, but the quality of the observation is so poor.
Christopher Isherwood
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We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers.
Christopher Isherwood
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We live in stirring times- tea-stirring times.
Christopher Isherwood
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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
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The Nazis hated culture itself, because it is essentially international and therefore subversive of nationalism. What they called Nazi culture was a local, perverted, nationalistic cult, by which a few major artists and many minor ones were honored for their Germanness, not their talent.
Christopher Isherwood
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I'm very militant, you know, in a quite way.
Christopher Isherwood
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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
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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
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What’s so phony nowadays is all this familiarity. Pretending there isn’t any difference between people —well, like you were saying about minorities, this morning. If you and I are no different, what do we have to give each other? How can we ever be friends?
Christopher Isherwood
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You see, Kenny, there are some things you don't even know you know, until you're asked.
Christopher Isherwood
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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
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I doubt if one ever accepts a belief until one urgently needs it.
Christopher Isherwood
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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
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The Quito telephone service is about as reliable as roulette.
Christopher Isherwood
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By helping yourself, you are helping humankind. By helping humankind, you are helping yourself. That's the law of all spiritual progress.
Christopher Isherwood
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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
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Sometimes awful things have their own beauty.
Christopher Isherwood