Down There On a Visit Quotes

“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.”
― Christopher Isherwood, Down There on a Visit

“Despair is something horribly simple.”
― Christopher Isherwood, Down There on a Visit

“Most of the time, thank goodness, we suffer quite stupidly and unreflectingly, like the animals.”
― Christopher Isherwood, Down There on a Visit

“Waldemar made a big sentimental scene with me before he left. He begged me to come with them. I refused. Tears came into his eyes. "We Aryans have to stand together," he said.

I am sure he said this without thinking. That's the disgusting power of propaganda: the Nazis have scattered such millions of these poisonous words around that you are apt to find one of them unexpectedly inside your own mouth.”
― Christopher Isherwood, Down There on a Visit

“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, Down There on a Visit

“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, Down There on a Visit