# Prater Violet

- Author: [Christopher Isherwood](https://www.leafyquotes.com/christopher-isherwood.md)
- Quotes: 8
- Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/christopher-isherwood/prater-violet

## Quotes

> 'Why should you do a job anyway? What's the incentive?'
>
> 'The incentive is to fight anarchy. That's all Man lives for. Reclaiming life from its natural muddle. Making patterns.'
>
> 'Patterns for what?'
>
> 'For the sake of patterns. To create meaning. What else is there?'
>
> 'And what about the things that won't fit into your patterns?'
>
> 'Discard them.'

p. 55

> The result of the rebuilding was a maze of crooked stairways, claustrophobic passages, abrupt dangerous ramps and Alice in Wonderland doors. Most of the smaller rooms were overcrowded, under-ventilated, separated only by plywood partitions and lit by naked bulbs hanging from wires. Everything was provisional, and liable to electrocute you, fall on your head, or come apart in your hand.

p. 52

> There is one question which we seldom ask each other directly: it is too brutal. And yet it is the only question worth asking our fellow-travellers. What makes you go on living? Why don't you kill yourself? Why is all this bearable? What makes you bear it?
>
> Could I answer that question about myself? No. Yes. Perhaps . . . I supposed, vaguely, that it was a kind of balance, a complex of tensions. You did whatever was next on the list. A meal to be eaten. Chapter eleven to be written. The telephone rings. You go off somewhere in a taxi. There is one's job. There are amusements. There are people. There are books. There are things to be bought in shops. There is always something new. There has to be. Otherwise, the balance would be upset, the tension would break.

p. 98

> 'You know, sometimes I wonder what all this is for. Why not just peacefully end it?'
>
> 'We all think that. But we don't do it.'
>
> 'Surely you're not fool enough to imagine there's anything afterwards?'
>
> 'Perhaps. No, I suppose not. I don't think it makes much difference.'

p. 73

> 'All these people,' Bergmann continued, 'will be dead. All of them. . . . No, there is one—' He pointed to a fat, inoffensive man sitting alone in a distant corner. 'He will survive. He is the kind that will do anything, anything to be allowed to live. He will invite the conquerors to his home, force his wife to cook for them and serve the dinner on his bended knees. He will denounce his mother. He will offer his sister to a common soldier. He will act as a spy in prisons. He will spit on the Sacrament. He will hold down his daughter while they rape her. And, as a reward for this, he will be given a job as boot-black in a public lavatory, and he will lick the dirt from people's shoes with his tongue...'

p. 33

> 'The whole beauty of the Film is that it has a certain fixed speed. The way you see it is mechanically conditioned. I mean, take a painting - you can just glance at it, or you can stare at the left hand top corner for half an hour. Same thing with a book. The author can't stop you from skimming it, or staring at the last chapter and reading backwards. The point is, you choose your approach. When you go into a cinema it's different. There's the film, and you have to look at it as the director wants you to look at it. He makes his points, one after another, and he allows you a certain number of seconds or minutes to grasp each one. If you miss anything he won't repeat himself, and he won't stop to explain. He can't. He's started something and he has to go through with it.'

p. 24

> 'We don't think enough [about the lot] of the other fellow, and that's a fact.'

p. 83

> 'Let me tell you something,' he began, as he dropped my manuscript casually into the waste-paper-basket. 'The Film is a symphony. Each movement is written in a certain key. There is a note which has to be chosen and struck immediately. It is characteristic of the whole. It commands the attention.'
>
> He started to describe the opening sequence. It was astounding. Everything came to life. The trees began to tremble in the evening breeze, the music was heard, the roundabouts were set in motion. And the people talked. Bergmann improvised their conversation, partly in German, partly in ridiculous English; and it was vivid and real. It was all so simple, so effective, so obvious. Why hadn't I thought of it myself?

p. 27