David Mitchell Quotes

Travel far enough, you meet yourself.

Truth is singular. Its 'versions' are mistruths.

...now I'm a spent firework; but at least I've been a firework.

If swans weren't real myths'd make up.

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

I believe death is only a door. One closes, and another opens. If I were to imagine heaven, I would imagine a door opening. And he would be waiting for me there.

Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.

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

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.

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

My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?

Once any tyranny becomes accepted as ordinary, its victory is assured.

I am going to tell you a secret. Everything is about wanting. Everything. Things happen because of people wanting. Watch closely, and you’ll see what I mean.

What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds.

In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.

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.

The truth of a myth...is not in its words but its patterns.

'Y' is about the weakest letter of all. 'Y' can't make up its mind if it's a vowel or a consonant, can it?

By each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.

The better organized the state, the duller its humanity.

To fool a judge, feign fascination, but to bamboozle the whole court, feign boredom.

Time is what stops history happening at once; time is the speed at which the past disappears.

What is any ocean but a multitude of drops?

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’.

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

...it’s not just the person who fills a house, it’s their I’ll be back later!s, their toothbrushes and unused hats and coats, their belongingnesses.

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

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

Creation never ceased on the sixth evening, it occurs to the young man. Creation unfolds around us, despite us and through us at the speed of days and nights. And we call it love.

Many children are natural fantasists, I think, perhaps because their imaginations have yet to be clobbered into submission by experience.

The world isn't ready for what I have to say.

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.

- This isn't an interrogation or a trail. Your version of the truth is the only thing that matters. -Truth is singular. It's 'versions' are mistruths.

How lazily "xperts" dismiss what they fail to understand!

All revolutions are the sheerest fantasy until they happen; then they become historical inevitabilities.

We looked at each other for the last time; nothing is as eloquent as nothing.

An idler and a sluggard are as different as a gourmand and a glutton.

Gosh. The subjunctive is always the first to go.

Wars are never cured, they just go into remission for a few years.

Perpetual encagement endows any mirage of salvation with credibility.

I think words operate like musical notes that the eyeball hears.

over 85% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

Love's pure free joy when it works, but when it goes bad you pay for the good hours at loan-shark prices.

It's true that stammerers can become more adept at sentence construction.

False modesty can be worse than arrogance.

Maybe then you comprehend, speaking one language only is a prison!

Trees're always a relief, after people.

Autumn is leaving its mellowness behind for its spiky, rotted stage. Don't remember summer even saying goodbye.

Faith, the least exclusive club on Earth, has the craftiest doorman. Every time I've stepped through its wide-open doorway, I find myself stepping out on the street again.

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