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Link	Quote	Stars	Tags	Author
3f362c2	he couldn't, as a respectable master in an English public school, have taken us to a brothel. Yet how I wish he had! His introduction to sexual experience would, I feel sure, have been a masterpiece of tact; it might well have speeded up our development by a good five years.			Christopher Isherwood
3fd26cb	George is very far, right now, from sneering at any of these fellow creatures. They may be crude and mercenary and dull and low, but he is proud, is glad, is almost indecently gleeful to be able to stand up and be counted in their ranks--the ranks of that marvelous minority, The Living. They don't know their luck, these people on the sidewalk, but George knows his--for a little while at least--because he is freshly returned from the icy pre..		the-living survivor	Christopher Isherwood
aec6c93	No. Even now I can't altogether believe that any of this really happened...		good-bye-to-berlin	Christopher Isherwood
8f3b6fb	The gramophone keeps reiterating a statement about life with which I do not agree.		music gramophone	Christopher Isherwood
746491e	John Gielgud told us this story about Mae West. She was asked, 'Do you ever smoke after you've had sex?' She answered, 'I never looked.		gay-authors jokes	Christopher Isherwood
3d0eb09	It's gone!" he repeats, almost ecstatically. "That's because you let it go," Jacob tells him."			Christopher Isherwood
313a777	When you want anything badly, you always have to make some sacrifices.			Christopher Isherwood
33ff9cb	E strano come ogni persona sembri avere un luogo suo... specialmente se non ci e nata.			Christopher Isherwood
f41d100	From 1929 to 1933, [age 25-29] I lived almost continuously in Berlin, with only occasional visits to other parts of Germany and to England. Already, during that time, I had made up my mind that I would one day write about the people I'd met and the experiences I was having. So I kept a detailed diary, which in due course provided raw material for all my Berlin stories. [from preface]		gay-authors	Christopher Isherwood
d5a3f8c	The Nazis may write like schoolboys, but they're capable of anything. That's just why they're so dangerous. People laugh at them, right up to the last moment...		political isherwood nazi nazis dangerous	Christopher Isherwood
d340f6f	George makes himself remembers. He is afraid of forgetting. Jim is my life, he says. But he will have to forget, if he wants to go on living. Jim is death.			Christopher Isherwood
13496c3	Despair is something horribly simple.			Christopher Isherwood
dc0a125	Staring and staring into the mirror, it sees many faces within its face - the face of the child, the boy, the young man, the not-so-young man - all present still, preserved like fossils on superimposed layers, and, like fossils, dead. Their message to this live dying creature is: Look at us - we have died - what is there to be afraid of?It answers them: But that happened so gradually, so easily. I'm afraid of being rushed." Christopher Ishe..			Christopher Isherwood
6ce1401	I mean, I'm not naive enough to imagine that anyone can be satisfied indefinitely by memories, especially if he's young and full of life, like you. I did my best to help you build up a reserve to keep going on.			Christopher Isherwood
5c29492	How could he possibly explain himself to these people? They wanted to learn English for show-off social reasons, or to be able to read Aldous Huxley in the original. Whereas he had learned German simply and solely to be able to talk to his sex partners. For him, the entire German language--all the way from the keep-off-the-grass signs in the park to Goethe's stanza on the wall--was irradiated with sex. For him, the difference between a tabl..			Christopher Isherwood
b1acc9b	You, Christopher, with your centuries of Anglo-Saxon freedom behind you, with your Magna Carta engraved upon your heart, cannot understand that we poor barbarians need the stiffness of a uniform to keep us standing upright.			Christopher Isherwood
fc45eab	I walked across the snowy plain of the Tiergarten - a smashed statue here, a newly planted sapling there; the Brandenburger Tor, with its red flag flapping against the blue winter sky; and on the horizon, the great ribs of a gutted railway station, like the skeleton of a whale. In the morning light it was all as raw and frank as the voice of history which tells you not to fool yourself; this can happen to any city, to anyone, to you.			Christopher Isherwood
87a4b5d	That's what makes most places utterly impossible - the people. They're so completely hateful. They want everybody to conform to their beastly narrow little way of looking at things. And if one happens not to, one's treated as something unspeakable. And then there's nothing for it but to leave at once.			Christopher Isherwood
04d9892	he begins to feel this utterly mysterious unsensational thing - not bliss, not ecstasy, not joy- das Glueck, le bonheur, la felicidad- they have given it all three genders but one has to admit, however grudgingly, that the Spanish are right, it is usually feminine, that's to say, woman-created.			Christopher Isherwood
8963581	And so, finding that, for once, I was not sorry to be alone, I said to myself: I am happy. Perfectly happy, I repeated, as my eyes roamed wide over the brilliant desolate sea and the empty contours of the land. Were they, after all, searching for something that was lacking? I hardly knew. A tiny obstinate figure by the dwarf obelisk under an enormous sky, I declared for the third time: I am absolutely happy, absolutely content. And, increas..			Christopher Isherwood
3bcc63d	Il risveglio comincia con due parole, sono e ora. Poi cio che si e svegliato resta disteso un momento a fissare il soffitto, e se stesso, fino a riconoscere Io, e a dedurne Io sono ora. Qui viene dopo, ed e, almeno in negativo, rassicurante; perche stamattina e qui che ci si aspettava di essere; come dire, a casa. Ma ora non e semplicemente ora. Ora e anche un freddo promemoria; un'intera giornata piu di ieri, un anno piu dell'anno scorso. ..			Christopher Isherwood
abba0a0	Lo specchio, piu che un volto, riflette l'espressione di una difficolta. Ecco cosa mi sono fatto, ecco il pasticcio che dio sa come ho combinato negli ultimi cinquantotto anni; espresso da uno sguardo opaco e tormentato, da un naso ispessito, da una bocca piegata in una smorfia come per l'acidita delle sue stesse tossine, da guance che cascano dai sostegni muscolari, da una gola che pende floscia in piccole pieghe rugose. Lo sguardo provato..			Christopher Isherwood
c5213cf	For Christopher, the Cosy Corner was now no longer the mysterious temple of initiation in which he had met Bubi; Berlin was no longer the fantasy city in which their affair had taken place. Their affair had been essentially a private performance which could only continue as long as Wystan was present to be its audience. Now the performance was over. Berlin had become a real city and the Cosy Corner a real bar. He didn't for one moment regre..			Christopher Isherwood
c1463bc	I like hearing the sound of your voice, but I don't care a bit what you're saying.			Christopher Isherwood
de72a0e	And at this very moment, like a miracle, the rail-bus appeared. We waved our arms frantically, hardly daring to hope that it would stop. It did stop. We scrambled thankfully on board. That is the irony of travel. You spend your boyhood dreaming of a magic, impossibly distant day when you will cross the Equator, when your eyes will behold Quito. And then, in the slow prosaic process of life, that day undramatically dawns--and finds you sleep..		south-america travel-writing	Christopher Isherwood
5c9ea4e	He dislikes even to touch these things, for they are the runes of an idiotic but nevertheless potent and evil magic: the magic of the think-machine gods, whose cult has one dogma, We cannot make a mistake. Their magic consists in this: that whenever they do make a mistake, which is quite often, it is perpetuated and thereby becomes a non-mistake....			Christopher Isherwood
e299a07	A story told me by Michael Barrie: Jesus and the Blessed Virgin go out to play golf. The Blessed Virgin is at the top of her form, drives and lands on the green. Jesus slices and lands in the bushes. A squirrel picks up the ball and runs off with it. A dog grab the squirrel, which still holds the ball in its mouth. An eagle swoops down, picks up the dog, squirrel and ball, and soars into the air. Out of a clear sky, lightning strikes the ea..		gay-authors joke	Christopher Isherwood
e3ccc91	I remember a rainy, depressing afternoon when she remarked 'What a pity we can't make love, there's nothing else to do,' and he agreed that it was and there wasn't.		sex friendship sexuality	Christopher Isherwood
143ca73	That is what War is, I thought: two ships pass each other, and nobody waves his hand.		travel-writing memoir	Christopher Isherwood
e08b7da	The usual pronouncement that Truman Capote is a 'birdbrain.' Gore [Vidal] has finished a novel called Two Sisters in which he admits that he and Jack Kerouac went to bed together--or was that in an article? (Gore told me about so many articles he's written and talks he has given that my memory spins.) Anyhow, Gore now regrets that he didn't describe the act itself; how they got very drunk and Kerouac said, 'Why don't we take a shower?' and ..		gay-authors memoirs	Christopher Isherwood
9bd51b2	I have kept this diary doggedly, day by day, because I believe a continuous record, no matter how full of trivialities, will always gradually reveal something of the subconscious mind behind it. I've never regretted keeping a diary yet. There are always a few nuggets of literary value under all that sand.		writing gay-men	Christopher Isherwood
54f5478	George feels a kind of patriotism for the freeways. He is proud that they are so fast, that people get lost on them and even sometimes panic and have to bolt for safety down the nearest cutoff. George loves the freeways because he can still cope with them; because the fact that he can cope proves his claim to be a functioning member of society. He can still get by.			Christopher Isherwood
7bcf1d0	He feels a nausea of distaste for them all; then sudden rage. Damn all food. Damn all life. He would like to abandon his shopping-cart, although it's already full of provisions.But that would make extra work for the clerks, and one of them is cute. The alternative, to put the whole lot back in the proper places himself, seems like a labour of Hercules; for the overpowering sloth of sadness is upon him. The sloth that ends in going to bed an..			Christopher Isherwood
97c29f3	From his angle, the curtain seems to form itself into a shrouded, wavering figure, indescribably terrifying in its very indistinctness. Something waiting, hovering on the threshold of the visible world. Some half-embodied fear gradually assuming a hideous outer form.			Christopher Isherwood
2cff758	I saw it all suddenly while I was reading . . . Forster's the only one who understands what the modern novel ought to be . . . Our frightful mistake was that we believed in tragedy: the point is, tragedy's quite impossible nowadays . . . We ought to aim at being essentially comic writers . . . The whole of Forster's technique is based on the tea-table: instead of trying to screw all his scenes up to the highest possible pitch, he tones th..		memoir	Christopher Isherwood
5aa796f	Katherine Anne [Porter] treated them like favored nephews; she even cooked meals for them. Unfortunately, however, beneath Christopher's deference and flattery, there was a steadily growing aggression. By her implicit claim to be the equal of Katherine Mansfield and even Virginia Woolf, Katherine Anne had stirred up Christopher's basic literary snobbery. , he began to mutter to himself, this vain old frump, this dressed-up cook in her arty..		gossip memoir	Christopher Isherwood
87b4496	Mr. Pilates was a bully and a narcissist and a dirty old man; he and Christopher got along very well. When Christopher was doing his workout, Pilates would bring one of his assistants over to watch, rather as the house surgeon brings an intern to study a patient with a rare deformity. 'Look at him!' Pilates would exclaim to the assistant, 'That could have been a beautiful body, and look what he's done to it! Like a birdcage that somebody tr..		memoirs gossip	Christopher Isherwood
c2dc65a	The other day I made an epigram. I said, Anni's beauty is only sin-deep. I hope that's original? Is it? Please laugh.			Christopher Isherwood
ae3a12f	you may think of a rock pool as an entity; though, of course, it is not. The waters of its consciousness--so to speak--are swarming with hunted anxieties, grim-jawed greeds, dartingly vivid intuitions, old crusty-shelled rock-gripping obstinacies, deep-down sparkling undiscovered secrets, ominous protean organisms motioning mysteriously, perhaps warningly, toward the surface light. How can such a variety of creatures coexist at all? Because..			Christopher Isherwood
84273f4	So now George has arrived. He is not nervous in the least. As he gets out of his car, he feels an upsurge of energy, of eagerness for the play to begin. And he walks eagerly, with a springy step, along the gravel path past the Music Building toward the Department office. He is all actor now--an actor on his way up from the dressing room, hastening through the backstage world of props and lamps and stagehands to make his entrance. A v..		religious reaffirmation-of-faith	Christopher Isherwood
e2511ac	A minority is only thought of a minority when it constitutes some kind of threat to the majority, real or imaginary.			Christopher Isherwood
4b827cf	After many a summer dies the swan.			Christopher Isherwood
7b1ceda	But George knows he can't do that. Because, absurdly, inadequately, in spite of himself, almost, he is a representative of the hope. And the hope is not false. No. It's just that George is like a man trying to sell a real diamond for a nickel, on the street. The diamond is protected from all but the tiniest few, because the great hurrying majority can never stop to dare to believe that it could conceivably be real.		reality	Christopher Isherwood
9e26cef	ve dep cua ho tua nhu ve dep cua thuc vat, khong bi vuong ban boi nhung chuyen phu hoa, lo lang hay no luc.		green pure	Christopher Isherwood

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