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?
Interpretation
True friendships are built on recognizing and valuing our differences rather than ignoring them.
In this quote, Christopher Isherwood emphasizes the importance of acknowledging the unique differences among individuals as a foundation for genuine relationships. He argues that pretending everyone is the same undermines the potential for meaningful connections, suggesting that our distinctions enrich our interactions and deepen our friendships.
In practice
During a discussion on community building, this quote could highlight the value of diversity.
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.
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 certainly should have,' he agrees, smiling and thinking what an absurd and universally-accepted bit of nonsense it is, that your best friends must necessarily be the ones who best understand you. As if there weren't far too much understanding in the world already; above all, that understanding between lovers, celebrated in song and story, which is actually such torture that no two of them can bear it without frequent separations or fights.
Men want to think women don't cheat, and women want men to think they don't cheat, and therefore the sexes have been playing a little psychological game with each other.
I didn't want to be alone, but I had to learn that the dimensions of my feelings are too violent. I had to learn this.
Strictly speaking, one should not even rightly compare virginity to marriage because you cannot make a comparison between two things if one is good and the other evil.
I talked and talked of everything I know about the white man's inhuman treatment of the Negro.
She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.
We meet no ordinary people in our lives.
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