David Mitchell, Ghostwritten Quotes

If you’re in your life, chance. Viewed from the outside, like a book you’re reading, it’s fate all the way.

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

Humans live in a pit of cheating, exploiting, hurting, incarcerating. Every time, the species wastes some part of what it could be. This waste is poisonous.

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

I added 'writers' to my list of people not to trust. They make everything up.

Right, my phone. When these things first appeared, they were so cool. Only when it was too late did people realize they are as cool as electronic tags on remand prisoners.

Taro taught me that people respect spirit, but even cowards don't respect cowards.

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

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.

Your leaders must know powerful magic. Yes, said one of the women. The magic is called Marx, Stalin, Lenin and Class Dialectics. It didn't sound like very powerful magic to me.

This, explained the angel, is hell. The people do not love each other. They only want to feed themselves.

Is peace of mind the co-workability of your laws?

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

But this isn't a ghost story: the ghost is in the background, where she has to be. If she was in the foreground she'd be a person.

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.

London is a language. I guess all places are.

There's no future in stories...Stories are things of the past, things for museums.

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

What's the book like?""Well, some of it's twaddle, but mostly it's just piffle. Cheers!

Go on, my dear, " urges the snake. "Take one. Hear it? 'Pluck me, ' it's saying. That big, shiny red one. 'Pluck me, pluck me now and pluck me hard.' You know you wan