David Mitchell

“Historically, unfortunately, race seems to be the major division that humanity has imposed on itself, a way of subdividing into smaller groups.”

“It's a very special talent that men have, to possess seeing eyes yet be so blind.”

“.....it's hard to describe a psychosoteric battle at close quarters..... Think of those tennis-ball firing machines, but loaded with hand-grenades trapped in a shipping container, on a ship caught in a force-ten gale.”

“My books are anti-absolutist and deeply distrustful of any religious stance that precludes the validity of any other.”

“Prayer may be a placebo for the disease of helplessness, but placebos can make you feel better.”

“Teachers're always using that "in your own words." I hate that. Authors knit their sentences tight. It's their job. Why make us unpick them, just to put it back together more shonkily? How're you s'posed to say Kapellmeister if you can't say Kapellmeister?”

“The empowered may serve justice, remodel the Earth, transform lush nations into smoking battlefields, and bring down skyscrapers, but power itself is amoral.”

“The clock’s pendulum catches the firelight, and in the rattle-breathed final moments of Jacob de Zoet, amber shadows in the far corner coagulate into a woman’s form. She slips between the bigger, taller onlookers unnoticed … … and adjusts her headscarf, the better to hide her burn. She places her cool palms on Jacob’s fever-glazed face.Jacob sees himself, when he was young, in her narrow eyes. Her lips touch the place between his eyebrows. A well-waxed paper door slides open.”

“There's a disease that young writers are susceptible to, which is, I will do this because I can - hubris, I suppose - without stopping to work out why.”

“there're times when i suspect that the mind has a mind of its own. it shows us pictures. pictures of the past and the might-one-day-be. this mind's mind exerts its own will, too, and has its own voice”

“The potatoes were starch grenades. The canned carrots were revolting because that is their nature.”

“But you have read Madame Bovary?' (I'd never heard of her books.) 'No.”

“... in a cycle as old as tribalism, ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only "rights", the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful.”

“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.”

“A wise man does not step betwixt the beast and his meat”

“I can write pretty much anywhere.”

“Scholars discern motions in history & formulate these motions into rules that govern the rises & falls of civilizations. My belief runs contrary, however. To wit: history admits no rules; only outcomes.What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts & virtuous acts.What precipitates acts? B”

“I'm certainly a plot and character man. Themes, structure, style - they're valid components of a novel and you can't complete the book without them. But I think what propels me as a reader is plot and character.”

“Any adaptation is a translation, and there is such a thing as an unreadably faithful translation; and I believe a degree of reinterpretation for the new language may be not only inevitable but desirable.”

“To enslave an individual troubles your consciences, Archivist, but to enslave a clone is no more troubling than owning the latest six-wheeler ford, ethically. Because you cannot discern our differences, you assume we have none. But make no mistake: even same-stem fabricants cultured in the same wombtank are as singular as snowflakes.”