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.
I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.
Going back after a long time will make you made, because the people you left behind do not like to think of you changed, will treat you as they always did, accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different.
In the process of planning and having a wedding, I forgot there would actually be a marriage, a union of minds, bodies, souls, and issues that would come together as soon as the ceremony was over.
We do God’s work for our brothers and sisters when we learn to listen to them. So often Christians, especially preachers, think that their only service is always to have to 'offer' something when they are together with other people. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking. Many people seek a sympathetic ear and do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking even when they should be listening.
Dona Crista laughed a bit. "Oh, Pip, I'd be glad for you to try. But do believe me, my dear friend, touching her heart is like bathing in ice." I imagine. I imagine it feels like bathing in ice to the person touching her. But how does it feel to her? Cold as she is, it must surely burn like fire.
What holds the world together, as I have learned from bitter experience, is sexual intercourse.
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