"I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking."

Goodbye to Berlin 1939     

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“You have never been inside a film studio before?”

“Only once.  Years ago.”

“It will interest you as a phenomenon.  You see, the film studio of today is really the palace of the sixteenth century.  There one sees what Shakespeare saw:  the absolute power of the tyrant, the courtiers, the flatterers, the jesters, the cunningly ambitious intriguers.  There are fantastically beautiful women, there are incompetent favorites.  There are great men who are suddenly disgraced.  There is the most insane extravagance, and unexpected parsimony over a few pence.  There is enormous splendor, which is a sham; and also horrible squalor hidden behind the scenery.  There are vast schemes, abandoned because of some caprice.  There are secrets which everybody knows and no one speaks of.  There are even two or three honest advisors.  These are the court fools, who speak the deepest wisdom in puns, lest they should be taken seriously.  They grimace, and tear their hair privately and weep.”

Prater Violet  1945

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Christopher Isherwood