David Mitchell Quotes

209 quotes in 2303 categories

• False modesty can be worse than arrogance.
• Writing is probably one-fifth coming up with the stuff, and four-fifths self-editing again and again and again.
• Sometimes, comics will make the observation that it's not jokes that are funny, it's characters that are funny. And isn't that true! That's why I…
• A life can get knocked into a new orbit by a car crash, a lottery win or just a bleary-eyed consultant giving bad news in…
• A novelist needs to know his own strong points and weak points.
• For me, novels coalesce into being, rather than arrive fully formed.
• Historically, unfortunately, race seems to be the major division that humanity has imposed on itself, a way of subdividing into smaller groups.
• I can write pretty much anywhere.
• I can't bear living in this huge beautiful world and not try to imitate it as best I can.
• I love HBO productions, actually, like 'The Wire.'
• I often lose myself in the Sudoku-like challenges of making a book work.
• I rarely ever put my head above the rampart and see where this big lumbering behemoth called 'global literature' is going.
• I still haven't quite got used to eating live fish.
• I think it's natural for youth to be drawn to newness: The world is still new for them.
• I think the story is the most ancient form of human entertainment.
• I think we think in terms of stories.
• I think words operate like musical notes that the eyeball hears.
• I'm a novelist, that's how I make my livelihood, and I concentrate on the novels.
• I'm from a time and place where bigheadedness was a really savage crime, and you'd get cut down for it by your peers and parents.
• I'm not a great deep political thinker.

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