“I think I’m a very unobservant person, one who goes straight to concepts about people and ignores evidence to the contrary and the bric-a-brac surrounding that person. Stephen Spender said an amusing thing about Yeats—that he went for days on end without noticing anything, but then, about once a month, he would look out of a window and suddenly be aware of a swan or something, and it gave him such a stunning shock that he’d write a marvelous poem about it. That’s more the kind of way I operate: suddenly something pierces the reverie and self-absorption that fill my days, and I see with a tremendous flash the extraordinariness of that person or object or situation.”
— Christopher Isherwood, The Art of Fiction No. 49: An Interview by W.I. Scobie
Tagged: Unobservant, Marvel, Stunning, Shock, Reverie, Momentary Muse
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The Art of Fiction No. 49: An Interview by W.I. Scobie

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