She is sighing deeply now with sympathy and delight - the delight of an addict when someone else admits he's hooked, too.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a shared understanding and connection between two people who recognize their mutual struggles or addictions.
In this quote, Christopher Isherwood highlights the complex interplay of emotions that arise when two individuals acknowledge their similar vulnerabilities or dependencies. The sigh of sympathy and delight signifies a profound bond that develops through shared experiences, suggesting that there is comfort in knowing that one is not alone in their struggles, mirroring the relief and joy of finding companionship in adversity.
In practice
In a support group meeting where shared struggles are discussed.
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.
No one can fill those of your needs that you won't let show.
You have no idea what it is like to constantly disappoint people. You see it the moment you meet them. You see in their eyes that they expected something so entirely different, and here they are meeting... you.
If he didn't care about you, you couldn't upset him.
We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.
I was moving among two groups... who had almost ceased to communicate at all, who in intellectual, moral, and psychological climate had so little in common that... one might have crossed the ocean.
I have a theory about marriage, Monsieur Boustouler. And it’s that nearly always you will know within two weeks if it’s going to work. It’s astonishing how many people remain shackled for years, decades even, in a protracted and mutual state of self-delusion and false hope when in fact they had their answer in those first two weeks.
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