David Mitchell Quotes

Travel far enough, you meet yourself.

... 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

How vulgar, this hankering after immortality, how vain, how false. Composers are merely scribblers of cave paintings. One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn't, the wolves and blizzards would be at one's throat all the sooner.

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.

I hear my father-in-law's response..."Naïve, dreaming Adam. He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!" Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?

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.

The better organized the state, the duller its humanity.

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.

- 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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

...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.

Me, I want to bloody kick this moronic bloody world in the bloody teeth over and over till it bloody understands that not hurting people is ten bloody thousand times more bloody important than being right.

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

I understand now that boundaries between noise and sound are conventions. All boundaries are conventions, waiting to be transcended. One may transcend any convention if only one can first conceive of doing so.

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.

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

False modesty can be worse than arrogance.

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

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

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

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

Three or four times only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, depressions, cold fronts, ill winds, and contrary tides... I mistook them for adulthood. Assuming they were a fixed feature in my life's voyage, I neglected to record their latitude, their longitude, their approach. Young ruddy fool. 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.

Gosh. The subjunctive is always the first to go.

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

Perpetual encagement endows any mirage of salvation with credibility.