Christopher Isherwood Quotes

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

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.

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

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

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

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

I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.

Sometimes awful things have their own beauty.

I doubt if one ever accepts a belief until one urgently needs it.

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

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.

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!

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.

One should never write down or up to people, but out of yourself.

We live in stirring times- tea-stirring times.

The sea only drowns its lovers.

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

A minority is only thought of as a minority when it constitutes some kind of threat to the majority, real or imaginary. And no threat is ever quite imaginary.

It seems to me that the real clue to your sexual orientation lies in your romantic feelings rather than your sexual feelings. If you are really gay, you are able to fall in love with a man, not just enjoy sex with him.

I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed.

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.

The paternalist is a sentimentalist at heart, and the sentimentalist is always potentially cruel.

I'll bet Shakespeare compromised himself a lot; anybody who's in the entertainment industry does to some extent.

No one ever hates without a cause.

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.