“Nowadays, in Japan, when mother, or baby, or mother and baby die in childbirth, people say, ‘Ah…they die because gods decide so.’… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
“Those were the terms in which my parents, keen for me to grow up well grounded in cynicism, explained things to me.… — 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
“All these people like my mother paying counselors and clinics to reattach them to reality; all of us people here paying Sony… — 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
When I talk about my artist parents, people imagine a bohemian environment and think, 'Aha, so that's where he gets it from!'… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
“Been thinking of my grandfather, whose wayward brilliance skipped my father’s generation. Once, he showed me an aquatint of a certain Siamese… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
I'm from a time and place where bigheadedness was a really savage crime, and you'd get cut down for it by your… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
“I'd love to know how Dad saw me when I was 6. I'd love to know a hundred things. When a parent… — 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
