Christopher Isherwood: His life has been lived, so far, within narrow...

A few times in my life I've had moments of absolute clarity, when for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp. And the world seems so fresh as though it had all just come into existence. I can never make these moments last. I cling to them, but like everything, they fade. I have lived my life on these moments. They pull me back to the present, and I realize that everything is exactly the way it was meant to be.

Christopher Isherwood

silence noise thinking

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

Christopher Isherwood

philosophical philosophy world

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

Christopher Isherwood

silliness capable intelligent

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

Christopher Isherwood

progress spiritual law

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

Christopher Isherwood

witty life funny

Sometimes awful things have their own beauty.

Christopher Isherwood

single-man awful sometimes

Think of two people, living together day after day, year after year, in this small space, standing elbow to elbow cooking at the same small stove, squeezing past each other on the narrow stairs, shaving in front of the same small bathroom mirror, constantly jogging, jostling, bumping against each other’s bodies by mistake or on purpose, sensually, aggressively, awkwardly, impatiently, in rage or in love – think what deep though invisible tracks they must leave, everywhere, behind them!

Christopher Isherwood

mistake past thinking

The more I think about myself, the more I'm persuaded that, as a person, I really don't exist. That is one of the reasons why I can't believe in any orthodox religion: I cannot believe in my own soul. No, I am a chemical compound, conditioned by environment and education. My "character" is simply a repertoire of acquired tricks, my conversation a repertoire of adaptations and echoes, my "feelings" are dictated by purely physical, external stimuli.

Christopher Isherwood

atheist character believe

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

persecution nazi jew

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

Christopher Isherwood

quality language writing

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

Christopher Isherwood

visitors towns imagination

The sea only drowns its lovers.

Christopher Isherwood

lovers sea

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

Christopher Isherwood

someday fixed cameras

The landscape, like Los Angeles itself, is transitional. Impermanence haunts the city, with its mushroom industries--the aircraft perpetually becoming obsolete, the oil which must one day be exhausted, the movies which fill America's theatres for six months and are forgotten. Many of its houses--especially the grander ones--have a curiously disturbing atmosphere, a kind of psychological dankness which smells of anxiety, overdrafts, uneasy lust, whisky, divorce and lies.

Christopher Isherwood

divorce cities lying

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

taken attitude book

But seriously, I believe I'm a sort of Ideal Woman, if you know what I mean. I'm the sort of woman who can take men away from their wives, but I could never keep anybody for long. And that's because I'm the type which every man imagines he wants, until he gets me; and then he finds he doesn't really, after all.

Christopher Isherwood

men mean believe

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

Christopher Isherwood

addict delight hooked

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

asks answers people

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

knows book

We live in stirring times- tea-stirring times.

Christopher Isherwood

stirring tea

His life has been lived, so far, within narrow limits and he is quite naïve about most kinds of experience; he fears it and yet is wildly eager for it. To reassure himself, he converts it into epic myth as fast as it happens. He is forever play-acting.