I often lose myself in the Sudoku-like challenges of making a book work. — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw. — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
Writers are so used to books being optioned and then the movie never happens. — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
I'm a novelist, that's how I make my livelihood, and I concentrate on the novels. — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
But you have read Madame Bovary?' (I'd never heard of her books.) 'No. — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
For me, novels coalesce into being, rather than arrive fully formed. — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
I rarely ever put my head above the rampart and see where this big lumbering behemoth called 'global literature' is going. — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
“So how does it feel?” is the reasonable question you hear a lot when your book completes the long ascent from production… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
“The art teacher's scarlet book was called Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille. 'As the title suggests,' Mr Dunwoody saw the… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
“A writer flirts with schizophrenia, nurtures synesthesia, and embraces obsessive-compulsive disorder. Your art feeds on you, your soul, and, yes, to a… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
Teachers're always using that "in your own words." I hate that. Authors knit their sentences tight. It's their job. Why make us… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
“When you write it, don't write it in the manner of a spooky story. Don't try to give an explanation. Just say… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
I think all writers of my age who are brought up on films probably by the age of 16 have seen many… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
“Old Father Timothy offers this advice to his younger readers, included for free in the price of this memoir: conduct your life… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
I elbowed my way into the grubby café, bought a pie that tasted of shoe polish and a pot of tea with… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
“The night in question, I had put aside my perpetual lavatory read, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , because… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
A book you finish reading is not the same book it was before you read it. — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
If you’re in your life, chance. Viewed from the outside, like a book you’re reading, it’s fate all the way. — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
She was widely read enough to appreciate my literary wit but not so widely read that she knew my sources. I like… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
When I think about it, I'm happily bewildered that people will preorder my books They'll preorder me. What a lucky guy! — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
As for reading, I wish I had a magic door to a library where I could go in, read for days and… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
My books are anti-absolutist and deeply distrustful of any religious stance that precludes the validity of any other. — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
Perhaps where text slides toward ambiguity, film inclines to specificity. A novel contains as many versions of itself as it has readers,… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
I'm certainly a plot and character man. Themes, structure, style - they're valid components of a novel and you can't complete the… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
The state of childhood resonates with life inside a fantasy novel. If you have no control over how you spend large chunks… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
“Problem was, all this is new. In English at school we study a grammar book by a man named Ronald Rideout, read… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
Mother used to say escape is never further than the nearest book. Well, Mumsy, no, not really. Your beloved large-print sagas of… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
“Reading off a page is like looking down at a landscape from a balloon – your eye "sees" the story as well… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
“In the corridor outside, a trolley squeaks by. The brigadier I knew has left his bombed-out face, leaving me alone with the… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
I got a rejection letter from an editor at HarperCollins, who included a report from his professional reader. This report shredded my… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
“In the next room a freckly girl Julia's age sat in a wheelchair. One of her legs wasn't there. She'd probably love to have… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
“... Ethical cyberexplorers are responsible, yeah? We are friendly ghosts in the machine, not poltergeists or hooligans. We are a growing breed. Over sixty-five… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
“I succumbed. Late-fifteenth-century verb, Old French succomber or Latin succumbere, but a basic necessity of the human condition, especially mine.” — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
“The second tunnel’s a Ministry of Defence tunnel...dug for a nuclear bomb shelter. The entrance is in the garden center at Woolworth’s in Great… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
War's an auction where whoever can pay the most in damage and still be standing wins. — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
The human world is made of stories, not people. The people the stories use to tell themselves are not to be blamed — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
So little is actually worthy of belief or disbelief. Better to strive to coexist than seek to disapprove . . . — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
I elbowed my way into the grubby café, bought a pie that tasted of shoe polish and a pot of tea with cork crumbs… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
