David Mitchell
Leaves turned to soil beneath my feet. Thus it is, trees eat themselves.Collection: Feet
Don't bemoan your misspent life quite yet. Forgive me for flaunting my experience, but you have no conception of what a misspent life constitutes.Collection: Forgive Me
Implausible truth can serve one better than plausible fictionCollection: Fiction
It'll be all right." Julia's gentleness makes it worse. "In the end, Jace." "It doesn't feel very all right." "That's because it's not the end.Collection: Jace
Torturous advances won over generations can be lost by a single stroke of a myopic president's pen or a vainglorious general's sword.Collection: President
I added 'writers' to my list of people not to trust. They make everything up.Collection: People
Strip back the beliefs pasted on by governesses, schools, and states, you find indelible truths at one's core.Collection: School
Assured her I've never loved anyone except myself and have no intention of starting now.Collection: Intention
Wars are never cured, they just go into remission for a few years.Collection: War
Pain is strong, aye - but friends' eyes, more strong." I told him that he knows next to nothing about me & I know nothing about him. He jabbed at his eyes & jabbed at mine, as if that single gesture were ample explanation.Collection: Strong
I pass through many Me's in the course of my day, each one selfish with his time. The Lying-in-Bed me and the Enjoying-the-Hot-Shower Me are particularly selfish. The Late Me loathes the pair of them.Collection: Selfish
Anticipating the end of the world is humanity's oldest passtimeCollection: Humanity
If we believe that humanity may transcend tooth and claw, if we believe divers races & creeds can share this world as peaceably as the orphans share their candlenut tree, if we believe leaders must be just, violence muzzled, power accountable & the riches of the Earth & its Oceans shared equitably, such a world will come to pass.Collection: Believe
Perpetual encagement endows any mirage of salvation with credibility.Collection: Mirages
I remain thankful to God for all his mercies.Collection: Thankful To God
Often I think boys don’t become men. Boys just get papier-mâchéd inside a man’s mask. Sometimes you can tell the boy is still in there.Collection: Boys
It's a small world. It keeps recrossing itself.Collection: World
Eva. Every day I've climbed up the belfry chanting a lucky chant at one syllable per beat, "To-day-to-day-let-her-be-here-to-day-to-day.Collection: Lucky
If losers can exploit what their adversaries teach them, yes, losers can become winners in the long term.Collection: Long
A weapon men use against women is the refusal to take them seriously.Collection: Inspirational
What is "poker"? A card game where abler liars take money off less able liars.Collection: Liars
A mountain you're plannin' on climbin' ain't the same as the one you ain't. It ain't so pretty.Collection: Mountain
Memories are their own descendents masquerading as the ancestors of the present.Collection: Memories
I understand now that boundaries between noise and sound are conventions. All boundaries are conventions, waiting to be transcended. One may transcend any convention if only one can first conceive of doing so.Collection: Waiting
over 85% of all statistics are made up on the spot.Collection: Funny
The rain's innumerable hooves spatter on the streets and roofs.Collection: Rain
I wonder how many years Suga has been carrying his curse around with him. I forget that other people in the world have broken parts too.Collection: Years
As an experienced editor, I disapprove of flashbacks, foreshadowings, and tricksy devices; they belong in the 1980s with M.A.s in postmodernism and chaos theory.Collection: Editors
People b'lief the world is built so an tellin em it ain't so caves the roofs on their heads'n'maybe yours.Collection: People
So little is actually worthy of belief or disbelief. Better to strive to coexist than seek to disapprove . . .Collection: Littles
The song instantly insisted it'd never existed.Collection: Song
As many truths as men. Occasionally, I glimpse a truer Truth, hiding in imperfect simulacrums of itself, but as I approach, it bestirs itself & moves deeper into the thorny swamp of dissent.Collection: Moving
If only,’ Shiroyama dreams, ‘human beings were not masks behind masks behind masks. If only this world was a clean board of lines and intersections. If only time was a sequence of considered moves and not a chaos of slippages and blunders.Collection: Dream
I elbowed my way into the grubby café, bought a pie that tasted of shoe polish and a pot of tea with cork crumbs floating in it, and eavesdropped on a pair of Shetland pony breeders. Despondency makes one hanker after lives one never led. Why have you given your life to books, TC? Dull, dull, dull! The memoirs are bad enough, but all that ruddy fiction! Hero goes on a journey, stranger comes to town, somebody wants something, they get it or they don't, will is pitted against will. "Admire me, for I am a metaphor.Collection: Book
For white men, to live is to own, or to try to own more, or to die trying to own more. Their appetites are astonishing! They own wardrobes, slaves, carriages, houses, warehouses, and ships. They own ports, cities, plantations, valleys, mountains, chains of islands. They own this world, its jungles, its skies, and its seas. Yet they complain that Dejima is a prison. They complain they are not free.Collection: Men
When insolvent, pack minimally, with a valise tough enough to be thrown onto a London pavement from a first- or second-floor window. Insist on hotel rooms no higher.Collection: London
Beyond the Indian hamlet, upon a forlorn strand, I happened on a trail of recent footprints.Collection: Footprint
Wars do not combust without warning. They begin as little fires over the horizon. Wars approach. A wise man watches for the smoke, and prepares to vacate the neighborhood, just like Ayrs and Jocasta. My worry is that the next war will be so big, nowhere with a decent restaurant will be left untouched.Collection: Wise
Ive never had cocaine. I work in showbusiness and no one has ever offered me cocaine. Can you believe that? It makes me worry Im not always the life and soul of the party that I feel like in my head.Collection: Party
One's ribs shouldn't be prison bars.Collection: Ribs
War may be an auction for countries. For soldiers it's a lottery.Collection: Country
All revolutions are the sheerest fantasy until they happen; then they become historical inevitabilities.Collection: Historical
The Revelation of Sonmi 451 To be is to be perceived, and so to know thyself is only possible through the eyes of the other. The nature of our immortal lives is in the consequences of our words and deeds, that go on and are pushing themselves throughout all time. - Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.Collection: Kindness
If I want to act relaxed, it's going to take all my cunning, skill, and concentration.Collection: Funny
War's an auction where whoever can pay the most in damage and still be standing wins.Collection: War
Taro taught me that people respect spirit, but even cowards don't respect cowards.Collection: People
Hate eats the hater the way ogres eat little boys.Collection: Hate
The mind abhors a vacancy & is wont to people it with phantoms.Collection: People
...now I'm a spent firework; but at least I've been a firework.Collection: Fireworks