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.
Don't tell me that [broken heartstrings] hurt less than a broken bone, that an ingrown life is something surgeons can cut away, that there's no way for it to metastasize - it does.
I think people have an idea in their heads about entertainers[and] celebrities. I think they feel like their lives are so perfect, and it's really hard to go through painful experiences when you are in the public eye because it's hard to have closure.
I cried a river of tears but he was too heavy to float on them. So I dragged him with me these years across an ocean.
Would you give up your vengeance against someone you hate if it meant saving someone you love? Would you want your dreams to come true if it meant granting your enemy's dying wish?
How one hates to think of oneself as alone. How one avoids it. It seems to imply rejection or unpopularity.
If you care about somebody, you should want them to be happy. Even if you wind up being left out.
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