Christopher Isherwood quotes - page 2
California is a tragic country - like Palestine, like every Promised Land. Its short history is a fever-chart of migrations - the land rush, the gold rush, the oil rush, the movie rush, the Okie fruit-picking rush, the wartime rush to the aircraft factories - followed, in each instance, by counter-migrations of the disappointed and unsuccessful, moving sorrowfully homeward.
Christopher Isherwood
You've got to think, to discriminate, to exercise your own free will and judgment. And you must do this, I repeat, without tension, quite rationally and calmly. For if you give way to fury against the hypnotists, if you smash the radio and tear the newspapers to shreds, you will only rush to the other extreme and fossilize into defiant eccentricity.
Christopher Isherwood
The whole beauty of the Film is that it has a certain fixed speed. The way you see it is mechanically conditioned. I mean, take a painting - you can just glance at it, or you can stare at the left hand top corner for half an hour. Same thing with a book. The author can't stop you from skimming it, or staring at the last chapter and reading backwards. The point is, you choose your approach. When you go into a cinema it's different. There's the film, and you have to look at it as the director wants you to look at it. He makes his points, one after another, and he allows you a certain number of seconds or minutes to grasp each one. If you miss anything he won't repeat himself, and he won't stop to explain. He can't. He's started something and he has to go through with it.
Christopher Isherwood
The result of the rebuilding was a maze of crooked stairways, claustrophobic passages, abrupt dangerous ramps and Alice in Wonderland doors. Most of the smaller rooms were overcrowded, under-ventilated, separated only by plywood partitions and lit by naked bulbs hanging from wires. Everything was provisional, and liable to electrocute you, fall on your head, or come apart in your hand.
Christopher Isherwood
