“I find a certain comfort," confesses Marinus, "in humanity's helplessness.” — David Mitchell Comfort Copy Share Image
Words are what you fight with but what you fight about is whether or not you're afraid of them. — David Mitchell Afraid Copy Share Image
“After the nuclear war, kids like them’ll rule what’s left. It’ll be hell.” — David Mitchell Children Copy Share Image
“But an ink brush, she thinks, is a skeleton key for a prisoner's mind.” — David Mitchell Prisoner Copy Share Image
I recently bought a cat, but took it back a day later because our personalities clashed. — David Mitchell Cat 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 Novelist Copy Share Image
“Your life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean." "Yet, what is any ocean but a multitude of… — David Mitchell Life Copy Share Image
“I said something about reading not being knowledge, about knowledge without experience being food without sustenance.” — David Mitchell Education Copy Share Image
“A time is one’s own, Eva, when oneself and one’s peers take the same things for granted, without thinking about it. Likewise,… — David Mitchell Time Copy Share Image
“Now I seen Mauna Kena from Honokaa b'fore, o'course, but a mountain you're planning on climbin' ain't the same as the one… — David Mitchell Mountain Copy Share Image
Have you noticed," said John, "how countries call theirs 'sovereign nuclear deterrents,' but call the other countries' ones 'weapons of mass destruction'? — David Mitchell Country Copy Share Image
I understand now that boundaries between noise and sound are conventions. All boundaries are conventions, waiting to be transcended. One may transcend… — David Mitchell Boundaries Copy Share Image
“ if you go up there Old Georgie'll freeze you an' dig out your soul with a cruel'n'crookit spoony an' eat it… — David Mitchell Frostbited Boulder Copy Share Image
If the human condition were the periodic table, maybe love would be hydrogen at No. 1. Death would be helium at No.… — David Mitchell Condition Copy Share Image
“Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, and though a cloud's shape nor hue nor size don't stay the same, it's still… — David Mitchell Soul Copy Share Image
“A no-name place, as far as I could see, but it had a miserable cafe-cum-garage-cum-funeral parlor shared by a gang of silent… — David Mitchell Death Copy Share Image
“Sometimes John had recorded new compositions, or lines from his new poems. Sometimes he'd just record a busy night in The Green… — David Mitchell Family Copy Share Image
To enslave an individual troubles your consciences, Archivist, but to enslave a clone is no more troubling than owning the latest six-wheeler… — David Mitchell Archivists Copy Share Image
People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living.… — David Mitchell Arguing Copy Share Image
“So Wise Man summ'ned Crow an' say-soed him these words: Fly across the crazed'n'jiffyin' ocean to the Mighty Volcano, an' on it's… — David Mitchell Wisdom Copy Share Image
What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual… — David Mitchell Backbone Copy Share Image
“Eva knows I'm terra incognita and explores me unhurriedly, like you did. Because she's lean as a boy. Because her scent is… — David Mitchell Beauty Copy Share Image
“We create models to explain nature, but the models wind u gate-crashing nature and driving away the original inhabitants. In my lecturing… — David Mitchell Nature Copy Share Image
“Niels Bohr, the great Dane of quantum physics, was fond of saying, "It is wrong to think that the task of physics… — David Mitchell Bohr Copy Share Image
“Women, oh, women! They'll find the baddest meanin' in your words an' hold it up, sayin', Look what you attacked me with!” — David Mitchell Attacked Copy Share Image
“Six feet directly beneath his seat is a suitcase in the baggage hold containing enough C-4 to turn an airplane into a… — David Mitchell Copy Share Image
“A single night is stuffed with minutes, but they leak out, one by one.” — David Mitchell Leak Copy Share Image
If I want to act relaxed, it's going to take all my cunning, skill, and concentration. — David Mitchell Comedy Copy Share Image
“Poor England. Too much history for its acreage. Years grow inwards here, like my toenails.” — David Mitchell England Copy Share Image
“Oaks live for six hundred years. Two hundred to grow, two hundred to live, two hundred to die.” — David Mitchell Flower Copy Share Image
“Naming, thinks Jacob, even in ridicule, gives what is named substance.” — David Mitchell Ridicule Copy Share Image
“War's never a picnic. Although obviously soldiers do end up eating outdoors quite a lot.” — David Mitchell War 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 Behemoth Copy Share Image
“Orito banishes all thoughts of Jacob de Zoet, and recalls Jacob de Zoet.” — David Mitchell Crush Copy Share Image
“Ruddy hell, the cold smacked my face with an iron spade! Now I knew why northerners go in for beards, woad, and… — David Mitchell Northerners Beards 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 Bewildered Copy Share Image
Always, it is the poor people who pay. And always, it is the poor people's women who pay the most. — David Mitchell Pay Copy Share Image
“Photos’re better than nothing, but things’re better than photos ’cause the things themselves were part of what was there.” — David Mitchell Love Copy Share Image
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. — David Mitchell Atlas Copy Share Image
“The world has long forgotten, but we mountain-dwellers live in the prayer wheel of time.” — David Mitchell Forgotten Copy Share Image
