David Mitchell Quotes

120 Sourced Quotes

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

David Mitchell
In a cycle as old as tribalism, ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only "rights," the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful.

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

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

David Mitchell
Now I'm a spent firework; but at least I've been a firework.

David Mitchell
People are obscenities. Would rather be music than be a mass of tubes squeezing semisolids around itself for a few decades before becoming so dribblesome it'll no longer function.

David Mitchell
If losers can xploit [sic] what their adversaries teach them, yes, losers can become winners in the long time.

David Mitchell
I lost my balance when the train pulled away, but a human crumple zone buffered my fall. We stayed like that, half fallen. Diagonal People.

David Mitchell
History admits no rules, only outcomes. What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts & virtuous acts. What precipitates acts? Belief.

David Mitchell
If only,' Shiroyama dreams, 'human beings were not masks behind masks behind masks. If only this world was a clean board of lines and intersections. If only time was a sequence of considered moves and not a chaos of slippages and blunders.

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

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

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

David Mitchell
When insolvent, pack minimally, with a valise tough enough to be thrown onto a London pavement from a first- or second-floor window. Insist on hotel rooms no higher.

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

David Mitchell
This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself.

David Mitchell
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.

David Mitchell
We—by whom I mean anyone over sixty—commit two offenses just bu existing. One is Lack of Velocity. We drive too slowly, walk to slowly, talk too slowly. The world will do business with dictators, perverts, and drugs barons of all stripes, but being slowed down it cannot abide. Our second offence is being Everyman's memento mori. The world can only get comfy in shiny-eyed denial if we are out of sight.

David Mitchell
But ain't dyin' terrorsome cold if there ain't nothin' after?
Yay—she sort o' laughed but not smilin', nay—our truth is terrorsome cold.

David Mitchell
How lazily "xperts" [sic] dismiss what they fail to understand.

David Mitchell
Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an' tho' a cloud's shape nor hue nor size don't stay the same, it's still a cloud an' so is a soul. Who can say where the cloud's blowed from or who the soul'll be 'morrow? Only Sonmi the east an' the compass an' the atlas, yay, only the atlas o' clouds.

David Mitchell
People b'lief the world is built so an' tellin'em it ain't so caves the roof on their heads 'n'maybe yours.

David Mitchell
"But it's been done a hundred times before!" — As if there could be anything not done a hundred thousand times between Aristophanes and Andrew Void Webber! As if Art is the What, not the How!

David Mitchell
The mind has a mind of its own. It shows us pictures. Pictures of the past and the might-one-day-be. This mind's mind exerts its own will, too, and has its own voice.

David Mitchell
War may be an auction for countries. For soldiers it's a lottery.

David Mitchell