David Mitchell
I think all writers of my age who are brought up on films probably by the age of 16 have seen many more films than they have read classics of literature. We can't help but be influenced by film. Film has got some great tricks that it's taught writers.
I love HBO productions, actually, like 'The Wire.'
Travel far enough, you meet yourself.Collection: Inspirational
Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.Collection: Kindness
You say you're 'depressed' - all i see is resilience. You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn't mean you're defective - it just means you're human.Collection: Healing
Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.Collection: Inspirational
Once any tyranny becomes accepted as ordinary, its victory is assured.Collection: Victory
My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?Collection: Inspiring
Truth is singular. Its 'versions' are mistruths.Collection: Truth
I believe death is only a door. One closes, and another opens. If I were to imagine heaven, I would imagine a door opening. And he would be waiting for me there.Collection: Believe
Love's pure free joy when it works, but when it goes bad you pay for the good hours at loan-shark prices.Collection: Love
I am going to tell you a secret. Everything is about wanting. Everything. Things happen because of people wanting. Watch closely, and you’ll see what I mean.Collection: Writing
Little girls are like old cats. If they don't like you nothing on Earth will make them pretend to.Collection: Girl
True knowledge without xperience is food without sustenanceCollection: True Knowledge
Time is what stops history happening at once; time is the speed at which the past disappears.Collection: Past
A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.Collection: Love
Always, it is the poor people who pay. And always, it is the poor people's women who pay the most.Collection: People
It's true, reading too many novels makes you go blind.Collection: Reading
You can maintain power over people, as long as you give them something. Rob a man of everything, and that man will no longer be in your power.Collection: Men
Maybe then you comprehend, speaking one language only is a prison!Collection: Language
A book you finish reading is not the same book it was before you read it.Collection: Book
As for reading, I wish I had a magic door to a library where I could go in, read for days and days, and come back in the same minute I left. I'm still looking for the door.Collection: Reading
In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.Collection: Soul
If you’re in your life, chance. Viewed from the outside, like a book you’re reading, it’s fate all the way.Collection: Book
maybe the meaning of life lies in looking for itCollection: Lying
Dreams are shores where the ocean of spirit meets the land of matter. Dreams are beaches where the yet-to-be, the once-were, the will-never-be may walk awhile with the still-are.Collection: Dream
Any adaptation is a translation, and there is such a thing as an unreadably faithful translation; and I believe a degree of reinterpretatio n for the new language may be not only inevitable but desirable.Collection: Believe
I feel like something important has happened to me. Is this possible?Collection: Important
To fool a judge, feign fascination, but to bamboozle the whole court, feign boredom.Collection: Boredom
Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible.Collection: Inspiring
I have always preferred maps to books. They don't answer you back.Collection: Book
I hear my father-in-law's response..."Naïve, dreaming Adam. He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!" Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?Collection: Dream
Times are you say a person's b'liefs ain't true, they think you're sayin' their lifes ain't true an' their truth ain't true.Collection: Thinking
Under the Enrichment Laws, consumers have to spend a fixed quota of dollars each month, depending on their strata. Hoarding is an anti-corpocratic crime.Collection: Law
Courage is the highest quality for a soldier, but technology is a fine substitute.Collection: Technology
Whoever dies with the most stuff wins.Collection: Winning
Lunatics are writers whose works write them.Collection: Writing
As long as you can Houdini your way out of the Sisyphean constraints then originality happens.Collection: Long
Secrets affect you more than you’d think. You lie to keep them hidden. You steer talk away from them. You worry someone’ll discover yours and tell the world. You think you are in charge of the secret, but isn’t it the secret who’s actually using you?Collection: Lying
Try this for deviancy: fabricants are mirrors held up to purebloods' conscience; what purebloods see reflected there sickens them. So they blame you for holding the mirror." I hid my shock by asking when purebloods might blame themselves. Mephi replied, "History suggests, not until they are made to.Collection: Mirrors
The human world is made of stories, not people.Collection: People
Words are what you fight with but what you fight about is whether or not you're afraid of them.Collection: Fighting
Yay, Old'uns' Smart mastered sicks, miles, seeds an' made miracles ord'nary, but it din't master one thing, nay, a hunger in the hearts o' humans, yay, a hunger for more.Collection: Smart
Human hunger birthed the Civlize, but human hunger killed it too.Collection: Hunger
There's a link between bigotry and bad spelling.Collection: Links
Writing is such a damn lonely sickness.Collection: Lonely
Do," said Louisa finally, "whatever you can't not do.Collection: Said
The spirit was willing but the flesh was weak.Collection: Flesh
Who was blowing on the nape of my neck?Collection: Necks