I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that the observer simply records experiences without actively interpreting them.
Christopher Isherwood uses the metaphor of a camera to illustrate the role of a passive observer in life. The 'camera' represents a mind open to experiences, capturing moments without emotional involvement or personal judgment, highlighting a perspective of detachment that can lead to authenticity in recording reality.
In practice
During a photography workshop, you might use this quote to inspire participants to observe their surroundings without bias.
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.
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.
What’s so phony nowadays is all this familiarity. Pretending there isn’t any difference between people —well, like you were saying about minorities, this morning. If you and I are no different, what do we have to give each other? How can we ever be friends?
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.
The paternalist is a sentimentalist at heart, and the sentimentalist is always potentially cruel.
I am a camera, with its shutter open. Someday, all of this will be developed, printed, fixed.
I think a lot of people who want to be musicians terrify their parents because they don't have a living example of it in their families, and I did. So I always knew that it was possible.
I try to bring the audience's own drama - tears and laughter they know about - to them.
I have been given a lot of roles that are downtrodden, mammy-ish. A lot of lawyers or doctors who have names but absolutely no lives. You're going to get your three or four scenes; you're not going to be able to show what you can do.
Every building is like a person. Single and unrepeatable.
In a way, the characters often do take over.
The best I can do is to make a film every two years.
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