Christopher Isherwood Quotes

So now George has arrived. He is not nervous inthe least. As he gets out of his car, he feels an ups...

The prefect evening...lying down on the couch beside the bookcase and reading himself sleepy...Jim l...

Does he know about me? George wonders; do any of them? Oh yes, probably. It wouldn't interest them. ...

They keep telling you, when you’re older, you’ll have experience—and that’s supposed to be so great....

By the time it has gotten dressed, it has become he; has become already more or less George — though...

Staring and staring into the mirror, it sees many faces within its face - the face of the child, the...

He crosses the front room, which he calls his study, and comes down the staircase. The stairs turn a...

A veteran, calm and assured, he pauses for a well-measured moment in the doorway of the office and t...

I certainly should have,' he agrees, smiling and thinking what an absurd and universally-accepted bi...

Waking up begins with saying am and now. That which has awoken then lies for a while staring up at t...

These books have not made George nobler or better or more truly wise. It is just that he likes liste...

The more I think about myself, the more I'm persuaded that, as a person, I really don't exist. That ...

Why do I prefer boys? Because of their shape and their voices and their smell and the way they move....

Write, live what happens; Life is too sacred for invention – though we may lie about it sometimes, t...

...I remember a rainy, depressing afternoon when she remarked 'What a pity we can't make love, there...

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

Despair is something horribly simple.

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

An afternoon drive from Los Angeles will take you up into the high mountains, where eagles circle ab...

The Nazis may write like schoolboys, but they're capable of anything. That's just why they're so dan...

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

... he couldn't, as a respectable master in an English public school, have taken us to a brothel. Ye...

Up the coast a few miles north, in a lava reef under the cliffs, there are a lot of rock pools. You ...

[EM] Forster was the only living writer whom he would have described as his master. In other people’...

What irritates me is the bland way people go around saying, 'Oh, our attitude has changed. We don't ...

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

It seemed to me then that to have published a book - any kind of book - would be the greatest possib...

Chalmers, thanks to Baudelaire, knew all about Taffreuse Juive, opium, absinthe, negresses, Lesbos a...

If it’s going to be a world with no time for sentiment, it’s not a world that I want to live in.

2NOTES“You broke your other appointment, didn’t you?”“I did not! I told you on the phone—these peopl...

Mr. Pilates was a bully and a narcissist and a dirty old man; he and Christopher got along very well...

The pain of hunger beneath everything. At the end of all love-making, the dreamless sleep after the ...

I had failed him; I knew it. But I could do no more. It was beyond my strength.That night, I think, ...

From 1929 to 1933, [age 25-29] I lived almost continuously in Berlin, with only occasional visits to...

Think of two people, living together day after day, year after year, in this small space, standing e...

...all around George, approaching him, crossing his path from every direction, is the male and femal...

But George knows he can't do that. Because, absurdly, inadequately, in spite of himself, almost, he ...

What’s so phony nowadays is all this familiarity. Pretending there isn’t any difference between peop...

As they embrace, she kisses him full on the mouth. And suddenly sticks her tongue right in. She has ...

George smiles to himself, with entire self-satisfaction. Yes, I am crazy, he thinks. That is my secr...

But your book is wrong, Mrs. Strunk, says George, when it tells you that Jim is the substitute I fou...

For other people, I can't speak - but, personally, I haven't gotten wise on anything. Certainly, I'v...

But now isn’t simply now. Now is also a cold reminder: one whole day later than yesterday, one year ...

Up the coast a few miles north, in a lava reef under the cliffs, there are a lot of rock pools. You ...

The supermarket is still open; it won't close till midnight. It is brilliantly bright. Its brightnes...

The harassed look is that of a desperately tired swimmer or runner; yet there is no question of stop...

No, Geo—underneath all that, Nan really loves me. It’s just she wants me to see things her way. You ...