David Mitchell (author) Quotes

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

Implausible truth can serve one better than plausible fiction

I'd love to know how Dad saw me when I was 6. I'd love to know a hundred things. When a parent dies,...

It’s a bizarre act of self-mutilation to say that ‘I don’t get on with science fiction and fantasy, ...

…It's as if they actually think that what other people think of them somehow doesn't matter. I mean,...

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

This society doesn't work without booze – our parties aren't good enough, our conversations aren't s...

They've given Harry the attributes of pistachio nuts and crack cocaine without the health risks (ope...

As for reading, I wish I had a magic door to a library where I could go in, read for days and days, ...

...I shall pledge myself to the Abolitionist cause, because I owe my life to a self-freed slave & be...

The novelist is more like a pregnant woman who delivers her own child unaided. A messy procedure, wi...

I watched the stars and thought of other lives.

Reading off a page is like looking down at a landscape from a balloon – your eye "sees" the story as...

The world's a headmaster who works on your faults. I don't mean in a mystical or Jesus way. More how...

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

Answering the question 'How would you like to smell?' by saying 'I'd rather I didn't' is also no lon...

Me and Vinny are dead careful, and we only had sex once without a condom, our first time, and it's a...

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

The downside is the fear.The fear of something happening to her, the pressure of there being two bod...

In the Belgian backwaters, south of Bruges, there lives a reclusive English composer, named Vyvyan A...

Probably in a parallel universe not far from here, I'm working for Nintendo.

The last of the cherry blossom. On the tree, itturns ever more perfect. And when it’s perfect, it fa...

If the human condition were the periodic table, maybe love would be hydrogen at No. 1. Death would b...

Pretending”,' she looked at the garden, 'is not the truth.''But you said two true things, right ? On...

I would agree with your statement that many of my protagonists are outsiders. I wonder if we all are...

Sometimes I think that creativity is a matter of seeing, or stumbling over, unobvious similarities b...

The sacred is a fine hiding place for the profane.

Faith, the least exclusive club on Earth, has the craftiest doorman.

A life can get knocked into a new orbit by a car crash, a lottery win or just a bleary-eyed consulta...

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

Laughter is an anarchic blasphemy. Tyrants are wise to fear it.

Strip back the beliefs pasted on by governesses, schools, and states, you find indelible truths at o...

Every relationship has its own language. It takes a long time to evolve and read one another. Just a...

it’s like the British in Ireland in 1916’ , says Oisir O’Dowd. ‘The repeated the ageless macho mantr...

I’d always worried but kissing’s not so tricky. Your lips know what to do, just like sea anenomes kn...

But you have read Madame Bovary?' (I'd never heard of her books.) 'No.

Teachers're always using that "in your own words." I hate that. Authors knit their sentences tight. ...

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

...it’s not just the person who fills a house, it’s their I’ll be back later!s, their toothbrushes a...

Trees're always a relief, after people.

The art teacher's scarlet book was called Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille. 'As the title sugges...

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

If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coff...

Disco's are tricky. You look a total wally if you dance too early but after one crucial song tips th...

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

Photos’re better than nothing, but things’re better than photos ’cause the things themselves were pa...

Will I be some kid’s dad one day? Are any future people lurking deep inside mine?...Which girl’s car...

Secrets affect you more than you’d think. You lie to keep them hidden. You steer talk away from them...

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

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

. . .my dreams are the single unpredictable factor in my zoned days and nights. Nobody allots them, ...

You say you're 'depressed' - all i see is resilience. You are allowed to feel messed up and inside o...

If losers can exploit what their adversaries teach them, yes, losers can become winners in the long ...

Snarling an oath from an Icelandic saga, I reclaimed my place at the head of the queue. "Oy!" yelled...

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

Survival often demands our courage.

Try this for deviancy: fabricants are mirrors held up to purebloods' conscience; what purebloods see...

Patience's design flaw became obvious for the first time in my life: the outcome is decided not duri...

What if the differences between social strata stem not from genomics or inherent xcellence or even d...

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

The library refused many downloads, of course, but I succeeded with two Optimists translated from th...

Three or four times only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, ...

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

I put it to the great man [Hitchcock], the key to fictitious terror is partition or containment: so ...

Lady Moon rose an' gazed o'er my busted'n'beautsome Valleys with silv'ry'n'sorryin' eyes, an' the di...

... in a cycle as old as tribalism, ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; ha...

The lovelorn, the cry-for-helpers, all mawkish tragedians who give suicide a bad name are the idiots...

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

As an experienced editor, I disapprove of flashbacks, foreshadowings, and tricksy devices; they belo...

Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an' tho' a cloud's shape nor hue nor size don't stay the s...

Spent the fortnight gone in the music room reworking my year's fragments into a 'sextet for overlapp...

She was widely read enough to appreciate my literary wit but not so widely read that she knew my sou...

If consumers found fulfillment at any meaningful level, she extemporized, corpocracy would be finish...

Rights are susceptible to subversion, as even granite is susceptible to erosion. My fifth Declaratio...

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

Scholars discern motions in history & formulate these motions into rules that govern the rises & fal...

Now I seen Mauna Kena from Honokaa b'fore, o'course, but a mountain you're planning on climbin' ain'...

Travel far enough, you meet yourself.

To enslave an individual troubles your consciences, Archivist, but to enslave a clone is no more tro...

Trees, their incremental gymnastics and noisy silence, are another wonder of Outside to me.

After years of working with missionaries, I am tempted to conclude that their endeavors merely prolo...

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

The better organized the state, the duller its humanity.

...there ain't no journey what don't change you some.

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

I recalled my father-in-law's aphorism "To fool a judge, feign fascination, but to bamboozle the who...

Belief, like fear or love, is a force to be understood as we understand the theory of relativity and...

Scholars discern motions of history & formulate these motions into rules that govern the rises & fal...

People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call...

Luisa rolls her napkin into a compact ball. "I ask three simple questions. How did he get that power...

But to what end? Some... future revolution? It can never succeed.As Seneca warned Nero: No matter ho...

Autumn is leaving its mellowness behind for its spiky, rotted stage. Don't remember summer even sayi...

Leaves turned to soil beneath my feet. Thus it is, trees eat themselves.

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

But, Henry, this is wicked!' But, Adam, the world is wicked. Maoris prey on Moriori, Whites prey on ...

Pain is strong, aye - but friends' eyes, more strong." I told him that he knows next to nothing abou...

Any society's upper-crust is riddled with immorality, how else d'you think they keep their power? Re...

In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.

Finished in a frenzy that reminded me of our last night in Cambridge. Watched my final sunrise. Enjo...

The first of ‘Goose’s Two Laws of Survival.’ It runs thus, ‘The weak are meat the strong do eat.’ ” ...

Nothing has changed, except everything.