“...Power is lost or won, never created or destroyed. Power is a visitor to, not a possession of, those it empowers. The mad tend to crave it, many of the sane crave it, but the wise worry about its long-term effects. Power is crack cocaine for your ego and battery acid for your soul. Power’s comings and goings, from host to host, via war, marriage, ballet box, diktat, and accident of birth, are the plot of history. The empowered may serve justice, remodel the Earth, transform lush nations into smoking battlefields, and bring down skyscrapers, but power itself is amoral.” Immaculée Constantin now looks up at me. “Power will notice you. Power is watching you now. Carry on as you are, and power will favor you. But power will also laugh at you, mercilessly, as you lie dying in a private clinic, a few fleeting decades from now. Power mocks all its illustrious favorites as they lie dying…”

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About David Mitchell

British comedian, actor and writer

David James Stuart Mitchell is a British comedian, actor, and writer. He came to prominence with Robert Webb as part of the comedy duo Mitchell and Webb, and is known for playing Mark Corrigan in the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show. He won the British Academy Television Award for Best Comedy Performance in 2009. Mitchell and Webb have written and appeared in several sketch shows, including Bruiser, The Mitchell and Webb Situation, That Mitchell and Webb Sound, That Mitchell and Webb Look, and Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping. They also appeared in Apple’s British “Get a Mac” campaign, made their first film, Magicians, in 2007, and later starred in Ambassadors in 2013 and the Channel 4 comedy-drama Back from 2017 to 2021.

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Books by David Mitchell

Cloud Atlas

2011

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The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

2010

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Black Swan Green

2006

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The Bone Clocks

2014

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Utopia Avenue

2020

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