W. J. T. Mitchell Quotes

I often lose myself in the Sudoku-like challenges of making a book work.

I rarely ever put my head above the rampart and see where this big lumbering behemoth called 'global literature' is going.

I wonder if you encountered this dictum first spoken by a twentieth-century statesman: "An abyss cannot be crossed in two steps.

For me, novels coalesce into being, rather than arrive fully formed.

I can write pretty much anywhere.

Eva. Every day I've climbed up the belfry chanting a lucky chant at one syllable per beat, "To-day-to-day-let-her-be-here-to-day-to-day.

Historically, unfortunately, race seems to be the major division that humanity has imposed on itself, a way of subdividing into smaller groups.

A novelist needs to know his own strong points and weak points.

Do ants get headaches?

Writing is probably one-fifth coming up with the stuff, and four-fifths self-editing again and again and again.

A life spent shaping a world I want Jackson to inherit, not one I fear Jackson shall inherit, this strikes me as a life worth the living.

A mountain you're plannin' on climbin' ain't the same as the one you ain't. It ain't so pretty.

Anticipating the end of the world is humanity's oldest passtime

The her that lived in her looked out through her eyes, through my eyes, and at the me that lives in me.

Oh, bein' young ain't easy 'cos ev'rythin' you're puzzlin'n'anxin' you're puzzlin'n'anxin' it for the first time.

…and there, in the background, the sky’s sediment had sunk to a place where all the woe of the words ‘I am’ dissolved into blue peace. He said it. ‘The ocean.

I am, emphatically. Mental illness triggered by xperimental error.

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.

Dreams are all I have ever truly owned.

Courage is the highest quality for a soldier, but technology is a fine substitute.

Writing is such a damn lonely sickness.

Human hunger birthed the Civlize, but human hunger killed it too.

The earth's a door if you press your ear against it.

Lunatics are writers whose works write them.

Under the Enrichment Laws, consumers have to spend a fixed quota of dollars each month, depending on their strata. Hoarding is an anti-corpocratic crime.

Times are you say a person's b'liefs ain't true, they think you're sayin' their lifes ain't true an' their truth ain't true.

I have always preferred maps to books. They don't answer you back.

As long as you can Houdini your way out of the Sisyphean constraints then originality happens.

What do I miss? Second-hand bookshops where I can find things I had no idea I wanted. AbeBooks helps, but it doesn't have that smell.

Yay, Old'uns' Smart mastered sicks, miles, seeds an' made miracles ord'nary, but it din't master one thing, nay, a hunger in the hearts o' humans, yay, a hunger for more.

The human world is made of stories, not people. The people the stories use to tell themselves are not to be blamed

Act', implores the Ghost of Future Regret. 'I shan't give you another chance'. [and so Jacob does] 'Damned fool,' groans the Demon of Present Regret. 'What have you done?

What is "poker"? A card game where abler liars take money off less able liars.

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.

My rule is to use whatever feels right at the moment and then break that rule if you want.

There's a difference between the way I see it and the character's interpretation of the events, so the rules within the film are the rules within the film.

I love horror movies, but it's not the only thing I want to do.

I like too many different kinds of movies to only want to do one kind.

You get out there in space and say to yourself: that's home. That's the only home we have, and the only one we're going to have for a long time