David Mitchell Quotes

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

This is my moral. Trust what you dream. Not what you think.

When you win, the rules change, and you find you’ve lost

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

I recalled my father-in-law's aphorism "To fool a judge, feign fascination, but to bamboozle the whole court, feign boredom..." & I pretended to extract a speck from my eye.

And grade every simile and metaphor from one star to five, and remove any threes or below. It hurts when you operate, but afterwards you feel much better.

Only one-tenth of what you write will make it into your manuscript, but when you knock on that tenth” – I rap my knuckles on the table – “you’ll hear oaken solidity, not sawdust and glue.

Life’s more science-fictiony by the day.

Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms round the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage.

London is a language. I guess all places are.

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

Don't worry, all is well. All is so perfectly, damnably well.

Photos’re better than nothing, but things’re better than photos ’cause the things themselves were part of what was there.

...that human hunger birthed the Civ'lize, but human hunger killed it too.

Nothing has changed, except everything.

What man ain't the honestest cove in his own eyes?" Grote's round face is a bronze moon in the dark. "'Tain't good intentions what paves the road to hell: it's self-justifyin's.

The potatoes were starch grenades. The canned carrots were revolting because that is their nature.

Perfume counters in department stores, Holly Deblin smells of, the middle of July, and cinnamon Tic Tacs.

The human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature.

Human cruelty can be infinite. Human generosity can be boundless.

You only value something if you know it’ll end.

Only I don't close my eyes these days, because it hurts too much when I open them.

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.

The novelist is more like a pregnant woman who delivers her own child unaided. A messy procedure, with lots of groaning.

You groan and shake your head, Sixsmith, I know, but you smile too, which is why I love you.

Holly rubs her temples. “Are we talking ... vampires?”Arkady groans. “On, the V-word! Here it comes again.

Such narrative arcs make good movies but shitty existences.

But thought has no eyelids to close or ears to block...

I watched the stars and thought of other lives.

Survival often demands our courage.

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

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

Snarling an oath from an Icelandic saga, I reclaimed my place at the head of the queue. "Oy!" yelled a punk rocker, with studs in his cranium. "There's a fackin' q

& everywhere he observed that casual brutality lighter races show the darker.

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

Poems are lenses, mirrors, and X-ray machines.

But to what end? Some... future revolution? It can never succeed.As Seneca warned Nero: No matter how many of us you kill, you will never kill your successor.

A sprinkle of last-minute despair gives a soul an agreeably earthy aftertaste.

A single night is stuffed with minutes, but they leak out, one by one.

Young mothers are the most vicious tribe in the world if you don't fit in.

...if you bare your arse to a vengeful unicorn, the number of possible outcomes dwindles to one.

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

Fire’s the sun, unwindin’ itself out o’ the wood.

Anna would like you, he thinks, looking into her face. Anna would like you.

Hobbies are for pleasure, but rituals keep you going.

Lady Moon rose an' gazed o'er my busted'n'beautsome Valleys with silv'ry'n'sorryin' eyes, an' the dingos mourned for the died uns.

After ten pages I felt that Nietzsche was reading me, not I him.

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

Loyalty looks simple... but it ain't.

All the supernatural yarns need a realist explanation and a supernatural one.