David Mitchell Quotes

clocks in disagreement are worse than no clock at all.

Assured her I've never loved anyone except myself and have no intention of starting now.

Whoever opined "Money can't buy you happiness" obviously had far too much of the stuff.

Beyond the Indian hamlet, upon a forlorn strand, I happened on a trail of recent footprints.

The most malicious god is the god of the counted chicken.

Time is the speed at which the past decays.

The best way to get out of debt is not to seek to get out of debt, but to seek to create wealth

Ive never had cocaine. I work in showbusiness and no one has ever offered me cocaine. Can you believe that? It makes me worry Im not always the life and soul of the party that I feel like in my head.

I really wish they hadn't made the set out of asbestos.

The human world is made of stories, not people.

One cannot pass by without thinking of the density of men in the ground.

We are only what we know, and I wished to be so much more than I was, sorely.

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

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 wind up in the crappers try telling nothing but the truth.

How gleefully life shreds our well crafted plans.

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.

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

Grief is an amputation, but hope is incurable haemophilia: you bleed and bleed and bleed. Like Schrödinger’s cat inside a box you can never ever open.

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

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

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

Women, oh, women! They'll find the baddest meanin' in your words an' hold it up, sayin', Look what you attacked me with!

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

Nothing attunes you to the beauty of the quotidian like a man who decides not to kill you after all

Glass & peace alike betray proof of fragility under repeated blows.

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.

I’m not sorry it stopped. [on Lady Gaga’s ”Poker Face”]

I've never listened to music lying down. Listening's reading if you close your eyes.Music's a wood you walk through.

In the Belgian backwaters, south of Bruges, there lives a reclusive English composer, named Vyvyan Ayrs. You won’t have heard of him because you’re a musical oaf, but he’s one of the greats.

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

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

The empowered may serve justice, remodel the Earth, transform lush nations into smoking battlefields, and bring down skyscrapers, but power itself is amoral.

Power and moneyLike Pooh Bear and honeyStick fast.

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

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

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.

The sacred is a fine hiding place for the profane.

When I'm in doubt - as I am now - I ask myself, 'What would Carl Jung do?' - and act accordingly.

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.

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

The truth of a myth, your Honor, is not its words but its patterns.

I wish, he thinks, spoken words could be captured and kept in a locket.

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

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

Grief is an amputation, but hope is incurable haemophilia: you bleed and bleed and bleed.

Here’s the truth: Who is spared love is spared grief.