David Mitchell Quotes - Page 10

I added 'writers' to my list of people not to trust. They make everything up.

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.

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.

People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching.

The world never stops unmaking what the world never stops making. But who says the world has to make sense?

Folks with most to complain about seldom complain most.

over 85% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

Why fight the 'natural' (oh, weaselly word!) order of things? Why? Because of this--one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.

One cannot pass by without thinking of the density of men in the ground.

Whoever opined "Money can't buy you happiness" obviously had far too much of the stuff.

An idler and a sluggard are as different as a gourmand and a glutton.

The human world is made of stories, not people. The people the stories use to tell themselves are not to be blamed

We are only what we know, and I wished to be so much more than I was, sorely.

Memories are their own descendents masquerading as the ancestors of the present.

clocks in disagreement are worse than no clock at all.

Assured her I've never loved anyone except myself and have no intention of starting now.

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.

Wars are never cured, they just go into remission for a few years.

The human world is made of stories, not people.

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.

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.

Courage is the highest quality for a soldier, but technology is a fine substitute.

Whoever dies with the most stuff wins.

I'm a novelist, that's how I make my livelihood, and I concentrate on the novels.

I really wish they hadn't made the set out of asbestos.