Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw. — 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 don't have problems starting writing. I have problems stopping. I'm one of the last dads to arrive at school to collect… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
“Sometimes I think that creativity is a matter of seeing, or stumbling over, unobvious similarities between things—like composing a fresh metaphor, but… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
Writing is probably one-fifth coming up with the stuff, and four-fifths self-editing again and again and again. — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
“One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn't, the wolves and blizzards will be at one's throat all… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
I added 'writers' to my list of people not to trust. They make everything up. — 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
Writers are so used to books being optioned and then the movie never happens. — 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
There's been very little writing about speech impediments, even though it's this huge psychological barrier. — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
“That’s writing, I suppose—dozens of decisions about what’s in, what’s out, what goes with what, what’s clever but not honest, what’s so… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
“Storytellers are not priests who commune with an ethereal realm but artisans, like dumpling makers, if somewhat slower.” — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
There's a disease that young writers are susceptible to, which is, I will do this because I can - hubris, I suppose… — 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
“Lunatics are writers whose works write them, Bat." "Not all lunatics are writers, Mrs. Rey-believe me." "But most writers are lunatics, Bat-believe… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, ‘When you’re… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
“The novelist is more like a pregnant woman who delivers her own child unaided. A messy procedure, with lots of groaning.” — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
“Writers don’t write in a void. We work in a physical space, a room, ideally in a house like Laxness’s Gljúfrasteinn, but… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
I am going to tell you a secret. Everything is about wanting. Everything. Things happen because of people wanting. Watch closely, and… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
“Adverbs are cholesterol in the veins of prose. Halve your adverbs and your prose pumps twice as well.” — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
How vulgar, this hankering after immortality, how vain, how false. Composers are merely scribblers of cave paintings. One writes music because winter… — 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
