David Mitchell Quotes

A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.. David Mitchell

A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.

If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in

If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, ‘When you’re ready’.

As an experienced editor, I disapprove of flashbacks, foreshadowings, and tricksy devices; they belong in the 1980s with M.A.s in postmodernism and chaos theory.

Neither of us had anything to say, or rather we had everything to say, but after all those nights of not saying a word, we suddenly found we had not one dollar of time left between us.

Words are what you fight with but what you fight about is whether or not you’re

Words are what you fight with but what you fight about is whether or not you’re afraid of them.

The sacred is a fine hiding place for the profane.. David Mitchell

The sacred is a fine hiding place for the profane.

Tokyo is a model of that serial big-bang theory of the universe. It explodes at five P.M. and people matter is hurled to the suburbs, but by 5 A.M. the people-matter gravity reasserts itself, and everything surges back toward the center, where mass densens for the next explosion.

Not a clue – and, no, I don’t touch drugs. The world’s unstable enough without scrambling

Not a clue – and, no, I don’t touch drugs. The world’s unstable enough without scrambling your brain for kicks.

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love..

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love.

I believe there is another world waiting for us. A better world. And I'll be waiting

I believe there is another world waiting for us. A better world. And I'll be waiting for you there.

Travel far enough, you meet yourself.. David Mitchell

Travel far enough, you meet yourself.

...there ain't no journey what don't change you some.. David Mitchell

...there ain't no journey what don't change you some.

Dreams are shores where the ocean of spirit meets the land of matter. Dreams are beaches where the yet-to-be, the once-were, the will-never-be may walk awhile with the still are.

Integrity is a bugger, it really is. Lying can get you into difficulties, but to really

Integrity is a bugger, it really is. Lying can get you into difficulties, but to really wind up in the crappers try telling nothing but the truth.

Strip back the beliefs pasted on by governesses, schools, and states, you find indelible truths at

Strip back the beliefs pasted on by governesses, schools, and states, you find indelible truths at one's core.

How gleefully life shreds our well crafted plans.. David Mitchell

How gleefully life shreds our well crafted plans.

Hey, metaphysics seminar is on the roof. Just take the elevator up and keep walking until

Hey, metaphysics seminar is on the roof. Just take the elevator up and keep walking until you hit the sidewalk. Anything is true if enough people believe it.

Teachers're always using that "in your own words." I hate that. Authors knit their sentences tight. It's their job. Why make us unpick them, just to put it back together more shonkily? How're you s'posed to say Kapellmeister if you can't say Kapellmeister?

Our ancestors built temples for their gods. We build department stores.. David Mitchell

Our ancestors built temples for their gods. We build department stores.

The better organized the state, the duller its humanity.. David Mitchell

The better organized the state, the duller its humanity.

The last of the cherry blossom. On the tree, it
turns ever more perfect. And when it’s perfect, it falls. And then of course once it hits the
ground it gets all mushed up. So it’s only absolutely perfect when it’s falling through the air,
this way and that, for the briefest time!.!.!.

If the affluent cannot afford hope, you cannot expect the destitute to pay for desperation.. David

If the affluent cannot afford hope, you cannot expect the destitute to pay for desperation.

I lost my balance when the train pulled away, but a human crumple zone buffered my fall. We stayed like that, half fallen. Diagonal People.

I asked, how is knowledge found? 'You must learn how to read, little sister,' he said..

I asked, how is knowledge found?
'You must learn how to read, little sister,' he said.

Faith, the least exclusive club on Earth, has the craftiest doorman.. David Mitchell

Faith, the least exclusive club on Earth, has the craftiest doorman.

Prayer may be a placebo for the disease of helplessness, but placebos can make you feel

Prayer may be a placebo for the disease of helplessness, but placebos can make you feel better.

Bunlardan nasıl bir ahlak dersi çıkarmalı? Barış, Rabbimiz tarafından ne kadar sevilse de, ancak komşularınız da sizin gibi vicdanlıysa esas erdemlerden biri sayılır.

Men marry women hoping they'll never change. Women marry men hoping they will.. David Mitchell

Men marry women hoping they'll never change. Women marry men hoping they will.

Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.. David Mitchell

Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.

Mother used to say escape is never further than the nearest book.. David Mitchell

Mother used to say escape is never further than the nearest book.

Books’ll be back,” Esther-in-Unalaq predicts. “Wait till the power grids start failing in the 2030s and the datavats get erased. It’s not far away. The future looks a lot like the past.

Books tended not to switch their stories whenever it suited them.. David Mitchell

Books tended not to switch their stories whenever it suited them.

...books may speak, but they do not listen.. David Mitchell

...books may speak, but they do not listen.

Do you know? He says. I feel I've known you for years, not ninety minutes.. David

Do you know? He says. "I feel I've known you for years, not ninety minutes.

Luisa rolls her napkin into a compact ball. "I ask three simple questions. How did he get that power? How is he using it? And how can it be taken off the sonofabitch?

A book you finish reading is not the same book it was before you read it..

A book you finish reading is not the same book it was before you read it.

As for reading, I wish I had a magic door to a library where I could go in, read for days and days, and come back in the same minute I left. I'm still looking for the door.

Italians give their city sexes, and they all agree that the sex for a particular city is quite correct, but none of them can explain why. I love that. London's middle-aged and male, respectably married but secretly gay.

Trees're always a relief, after people.. David Mitchell

Trees're always a relief, after people.

At dawn the waves looked like mountain ranges tipped with gold as sunbeams slanted low under burgundy clouds.

A volley of hailstones began abruptly, filled the woods with a frenzied percussion & ended on the sudden.

Birdsong foamed in the hour-before-dawn garden.

Fantasy. Lunacy.
All revolutions are, until they happen, then they are historical inevitabilities.

A book can’t be a half-fantasy any more than a woman can be half pregnant

All these people like my mother paying counselors and clinics to reattach them to reality; all of us people here paying Sony and Sega to reattach us to unreality.

Always, it is the poor people who pay. And always, it is the poor people's women who pay the most.

Have you noticed," said John, "how countries call theirs 'sovereign nuclear deterrents,' but call the other countries' ones 'weapons of mass destruction'?

On bad days you wonder, ‘Why not just back off from the war and lead a quiet metalife?

As if Art is the What, not the How!

Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an' tho' a cloud's shape nor hue nor size don't stay the same, it's still a cloud an' so is a soul. Who can say where the cloud's blowed from or who the soul'll be 'morrow? Only Sonmi the east an' the west an' the compass an' the atlas, yay, only the atlas o' clouds.

Try this for deviancy: fabricants are mirrors held up to purebloods' conscience; what purebloods see reflected there sickens them. So they blame you for holding the mirror."

I hid my shock by asking when purebloods might blame themselves.

Mephi replied, "History suggests, not until they are made to.

The double-crossed, might-have-been history of my country is not the study of what actually took place here: it's the study of historians' studies. . . .
Memories are their own descendants masquerading as the ancestors of the present.

La paz es como el cristal: si se golpea repetidamente, termina mostrando su fragilidad.

¡Y cuando exhales el último suspiro, sólo entonces, te darás cuenta de que tu vida no ha sido más que una minúscula gota en un océano infinito!
Y sin embargo, ¿qué es un océano sino una multitud de gotas?

I find a certain comfort," confesses Marinus, "in humanity's helplessness.

science devises ever bloodier means of war until humanity’s powers of destruction overcome our powers of creation and our civilisation drives itself to extinction.

I have always unswervingly held, that God, in our civilizing world, manifests Himself not in the miracles of biblical age, but in progress. It is progress that leads humanity up the ladder towards the God-head. No Jacob's ladder this, no, but rather Civilization's Ladder, if you will.

. . .my dreams are the single unpredictable factor in my zoned days and nights. Nobody allots them, or censors them. Dreams are all I have ever truly owned.

I wonder who had the first computer dream, where, and when? I wonder if computers ever dream of humans.

One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn't, the wolves and blizzards will be at one's throat all the sooner.

Disco's are tricky. You look a total wally if you dance too early but after one crucial song tips the disco over, you look a sad saddo if you don't.

Sometimes language can't even read the music of meaning.

In the smoky firelight the two old men nodded off like a pair of ancient kings passing the aeons in their tumuli. Made a musical notation of their snores. Elgar is to be played by a bass tuba, Ayrs a bassoon.

The heating systems composed works in the style of John Cage.

There no such thing as something! Why? Because everything's already turning into something else!

True metamorphosis doesn't come with flowcharts

Pain is strong, aye - but friends' eyes, more strong." I told him that he knows next to nothing about me & I know nothing about him. He jabbed at his eyes & jabbed at mine, as if that single gesture were ample explanation.

Judith Rey watches the young woman. Once upon a time, I had a baby daughter. I dressed her in frilly frocks, enrolled her for ballet classes, and sent her to horse-riding camp five summers in a row. But look at her. She turned into Lester anyway. She kisses Luisa’s forehead. Luisa frowns, suspiciously, like a teenager. “What?

Power and money
Like Pooh Bear and honey
Stick fast.

El poder, el tiempo, la gravedad, el amor. Las fuerzas que de verdad mueven el cotarro son invisibles.

Pues yo me hago tres preguntas muy simples: ¿Cómo ha obtenido ese poder? ¿Cómo lo está utilizando? Y: ¿cómo se le puede arrebatar al muy hijo de puta?

... in a cycle as old as tribalism, ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only "rights", the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful.

The soul is a verb. . . . Not a noun.

Better a soulless clone... than a souled roach.

Cynicism can blind one to subtler virtues

A wise man does not step betwixt the beast and his meat

Nonfiction that smells like fiction is neither.

Quienquiera que se inventase eso de que el dinero no hace la felicidad, se regocija Lloyd Hooks, está claro que no tenía bastante.

Survival often demands our courage.

Do," said Louisa finally, "whatever you can't not do.

But you have read Madame Bovary?'
(I'd never heard of her books.) 'No.

The art teacher's scarlet book was called Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille. 'As the title suggests,' Mr Dunwoody saw the book'd caught my attention, 'it's about the history of opticians. What are you about?

Las autobiografías ya de por sí son infumables, ¡pero anda que las novelitas! Héroe emprende viaje, forastero llega a la ciudad, alguien persigue algo, lo consigue o no lo consigue, conflicto entre voluntades opuestas. "Admiradme, porque soy una metáfora".

Any society's upper-crust is riddled with immorality, how else d'you think they keep their power? Reputation is king of the public sphere, not private. It is dethroned by public acts.

It's a very special talent that men have, to possess seeing eyes yet be so blind.

A weapon men use against women is the refusal to take them seriously.

The Future,” says Ian, in a film-trailer voice. “Coming soon, to a Present near you.

The library refused many downloads, of course, but I succeeded with two Optimists translated from the Late English, Orwell and Huxley;

The body is the outermost layer of the mind.

there're times when i suspect that the mind has a mind of its own. it shows us pictures. pictures of the past and the might-one-day-be. this mind's mind exerts its own will, too, and has its own voice

The learnin' mind is the livin' mind... an' any sort o' smart is truesome smart, old smart or new, high smart or low.

You say you're 'depressed' - all i see is resilience. You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn't mean you're defective - it just means you're human.

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