Quote

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

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
Therefore
Locals
Nazis
Ones
Essentially
Subversive
Talent
Local
Minor
Called
Hated
Minors
Culture
Majors
Nationalism
Artist
Major
Nazi
Many
Artists
Cult
Nationalistic
International
Honored
Perverted

More quotes by 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
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
Image
Only those who are capable of silliness can be called truly intelligent.
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
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
Image
The Quito telephone service is about as reliable as roulette.
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
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 must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers.
Christopher Isherwood
Image
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
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
Bad writing is bad not just because the language is humdrum, but the quality of the observation is so poor.
Christopher Isherwood
Image
What it sees there isn't so much a face as the expression of a predicament.
Christopher Isherwood
Image
We live in stirring times- tea-stirring times.
Christopher Isherwood
Image
Sometimes awful things have their own beauty.
Christopher Isherwood
Image
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
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
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
Image
I doubt if one ever accepts a belief until one urgently needs it.
Christopher Isherwood
Image
You see, Kenny, there are some things you don't even know you know, until you're asked.
Christopher Isherwood