The prefect evening...lying down on the couch beside the bookcase and reading himself sleepy...Jim lying opposite him at the other end of the couch, also reading; the two of them absorbed in their books yet so completely aware of each other's presence.
Christopher IsherwoodDo you think it makes people nasty to be loved? You know it doesnโt! Then why should it make them nice to be loathed? While youโre being persecuted, you hate whatโs happening to you, you hate the people who are making it happen; youโre in a world of hate. Why, you wouldnโt recognize love if you met it! Youโd suspect love! Youโd think there was something behind itโsome motiveโsome trick.
Christopher IsherwoodAs they embrace, she kisses him full on the mouth. And suddenly sticks her tongue right in. She has done this before, often. Itโs one of those drunken long shots which just might, at least theoretically, once in ten thousand tries, throw a relationship right out of its orbit and send it whizzing off on another. Do women ever stop trying? No. But, because they never stop, they learn to be good losers.
Christopher IsherwoodThe talk of pale, burning-eyed students, anarchists and utopians all, over tea and cigarettes in a locked room long past midnight, is next morning translated, with the literalness of utter innocence, into the throwing of the bomb, the shouting of the proud slogan, the dragging away of the young dreamer-doer, still smiling, to the dungeon and the firing squad.
Christopher Isherwood