David Mitchell Quotes - Page 8

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 calm voice.

I got a rejection letter from an editor at HarperCollins, who included a report from his professional reader. This report shredded my first-born novel, laughed at my phrasing, twirled my lacy pretensions around and gobbed into the seething mosh pit of my stolen clichés. As I read the report, the world became very quiet and stopped rotating. What poisoned me was the fact that the report's criticisms were all absolutely true. The sound of my landlady digging in the garden got the world moving again. I slipped the letter into the trash... knowing I'd remember every word.

I am, emphatically. Mental illness triggered by xperimental error.

Don't remember summer even saying goodbye.

I rarely ever put my head above the rampart and see where this big lumbering behemoth called 'global literature' is going.

I think it's natural for youth to be drawn to newness: The world is still new for them.

I still haven't quite got used to eating live fish.

I often lose myself in the Sudoku-like challenges of making a book work.

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.

I love HBO productions, actually, like 'The Wire.'

Writing is such a damn lonely sickness.

Go to hell, Willy, our souls eat poetry, but one has seven deadly sins to feed!

A novelist needs to know his own strong points and weak points.

Writing is probably one-fifth coming up with the stuff, and four-fifths self-editing again and again and again.

Who was blowing on the nape of my neck?

why human beings despise what is beautiful and good, and seek to destroy the things they need the most

Men invented money Women invented mutual aid

Humans live in a pit of cheating, exploiting, hurting, incarcerating. Every time, the species wastes some part of what it could be. This waste is poisonous.

The learnin' mind is the livin' mind, Meronym said, an any sort o'Smart is truesome Smart, old Smart or new high Smart or low.

Act', implores the Ghost of Future Regret. 'I shan't give you another chance'. [and so Jacob does] 'Damned fool,' groans the Demon of Present Regret. 'What have you done?

I...asked why purebloods despised me so. He replied, 'What if the difference between social strata stem not from genomics or inherent xcellence or even dollars, but merely differences in knowledge? Would this not mean the whole Pyramid is built on shifting sands?... fabricants are mirrors held up to purebloods' consciences; what purebloods see reflected there sickens them. So they blame you for holding up the mirror

Spent the fortnight gone in the music room reworking my year's fragments into a 'sextet for overlapping soloists': piano, clarinet, 'cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale, and color. In the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor; in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan't know until it's finished, and by then it'll be too late.

The soul is a verb." He impales a lit candle on a spike. "Not a noun.

People b'lief the world is built so an tellin em it ain't so caves the roofs on their heads'n'maybe yours.

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.