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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Doesn
Book
Even
Like
Read

More quotes by Christopher Isherwood

Image
What it sees there isn't so much a face as the expression of a predicament.
Christopher Isherwood
Image
By helping yourself, you are helping humankind. By helping humankind, you are helping yourself. That's the law of all spiritual progress.
Christopher Isherwood
Image
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
Image
Only those who are capable of silliness can be called truly intelligent.
Christopher Isherwood
Image
Bad writing is bad not just because the language is humdrum, but the quality of the observation is so poor.
Christopher Isherwood
Image
The paternalist is a sentimentalist at heart, and the sentimentalist is always potentially cruel.
Christopher Isherwood
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
We live in stirring times- tea-stirring times.
Christopher Isherwood
Image
We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers.
Christopher Isherwood
Image
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
Image
She is sighing deeply now with sympathy and delight - the delight of an addict when someone else admits he's hooked, too.
Christopher Isherwood
Image
I doubt if one ever accepts a belief until one urgently needs it.
Christopher Isherwood
Image
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
Image
You see, Kenny, there are some things you don't even know you know, until you're asked.
Christopher Isherwood