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9e6453b
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A book you finish reading is not the same book it was before you read it. Girls are the same, too, perhaps, in the morning.
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David Mitchell |
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2d4b04c
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Now smoking really is an expression of the rebel spirit--it's virtually sodding illegal! Yet what are we without our addictions? Insipid. Flavorless. Careerless!
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David Mitchell |
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2f1b6e6
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To have relied on a man to stay alive is a bond closer than blood.
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David Mitchell |
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a2e7b3d
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My in-ear Babelfish provides synopses of the passages rather than a running translation, but now and then the interpreter confesses, "I'm sorry, but I have no idea what he just said. I'm not sure the author knew, either."
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David Mitchell |
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dac85e1
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To fool a judge, feign fascination, but to bamboozle the whole court, feign boredom
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David Mitchell |
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2b39cee
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Holly slides off the chairlift like a gymnast, and I slide off like a sack of hammers.
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David Mitchell |
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bee4430
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Earlier, I stepped on a squid that had propelled itself over the bulwarks! (Its eyes & beak reminded me of my father-in-law.)
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David Mitchell |
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51c2119
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think of Big Mac's aphorism: In order to have sex, women need to feel loved; but in order for men to feel loved, we need to have sex.
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David Mitchell |
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6b1f1ac
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Psychological complexity, character development, the killer line to end a scene, villains blotched with virtue, heroic characters speckled with villainy, foreshadow and backflash, artful misdirection.
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David Mitchell |
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9d2600c
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Letting it go feels so sodding liberating.
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David Mitchell |
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1d5a6db
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A salaam aleikum." The elderly Irishwoman has a foamy cloud of white hair and a zigzag cashmere poncho. You wouldn't cross her."
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David Mitchell |
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dbbd7de
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I light up, fumigate my alveolar sacs and think dark thoughts
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David Mitchell |
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f059216
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Boundaries between noise and sound are conventions, I see now. All boundaries are conventions, national ones too. One may transcend any convention, if only one can first conceive of doing so.
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David Mitchell |
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b5105cc
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This, explained the angel, is hell. The people do not love each other. They only want to feed themselves.
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love
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David Mitchell |
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4f77862
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If you've not been through it, you can't understand, not really. Lucky you, I say. Control is about fear, see. If you're afraid enough of the reprisals, you don't say no, you don't fight back, you don't run away. Saying yes is how you survive. It becomes normal. Horrible, but normal. Horrible, because it's normal. Now, lucky you can say, 'Not standing up to him is giving him permission,' but if you've been fed this diet since the year dot, ..
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David Mitchell |
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9ae4670
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Still dark. The Alpine hush is miles deep. The skylight over Holly's bed is covered with snow, but now that the blizzard's stopped I'm guessing the stars are out. I'd like to buy her a telescope. Could I send her one? From where? My body's aching and floaty but my mind's flicking through the last night and day, like a record collector flicking through a file of LPs. On the clock radio, a ghostly presenter named Antoine Tanguay is working th..
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romance
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David Mitchell |
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4303cfb
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vets' fees. And the fifth curse is the kicker: the dread that you'll be the one who loses it all.
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David Mitchell |
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0369e87
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After years of working with missionaries, I am tempted to conclude that their endeavors merely prolong a dying race's agonies for ten or twenty years. The merciful plowman shoots a trusty horse grown too old for service. As philanthropists, might it not be our duty to likewise ameliorate the savages' sufferings by hastening their extinction? Think of your Red Indians, Adam, think on the treaties you Americans abrogate & renege on, time & ti..
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racism
justifying-genocide
justifying-murder
oppressors
indigenous-peoples
missionaries
justification
genocide
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David Mitchell |
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fe9745f
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I wish all this never had to change," says Rafiq, unexpectedly. I'm pleased he's content and sad that a kid so young knows that nothing lasts."
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transience
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David Mitchell |
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ebeb924
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Maailma ei lakkaa purkamasta sita minka on rakentanut. Miksi maailmassa pitaisi olla jarkea?
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David Mitchell |
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a7f2688
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People buy such bollocks at museums. They don't know what else to do once they're there.
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gift-stores
stores
museums
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David Mitchell |
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2e87278
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I wonder what love feels like on the inside because externally it turns you into the King of Tit Mountain.
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David Mitchell |
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f052f4f
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If we believe that humanity may transcend tooth & 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. I am not deceived. It is the hardest of worlds to make real. Tortuous advances won over generations can be lost by..
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David Mitchell |
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37d72e3
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Blame its user, blame its maker, but don't blame the gun.
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David Mitchell |
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4baacd4
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Mum said I'd learn betrayals came in various shapes and sizes, but to betray someone's dream is the unforgivable one.
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David Mitchell |
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a38ea95
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So, I asked 'gain, is it better to be savage'n to be Civ'lized? List'n, savages an' Civ'lizeds ain't divvied by tribes or b'liefs or mountain ranges, nay, ev'ry human is both, yay. Old Uns'd got the Smart o' gods but the savagery o'jackals an' that's what tripped the Fall. Some savages what I knowed got a beautsome Civ'lized heart beatin' in their ribs. Maybe some Kona. Not 'nuff to say so their hole tribe, but who knows one day. One day. "..
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David Mitchell |
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4fe8f28
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A clock with no hands. "Freedom!" is the fatuous jingle of our civilization, but only those deprived of it have the barest inkling re: what the stuff actually is. A" --
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David Mitchell |
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5a522e8
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But, Henry, this is wicked!' But, Adam, the world is wicked. Maoris prey on Moriori, Whites prey on darker-hued cousins, fleas prey on mice, cats prey on rats, Christians on infidels, first mates on cabin boys, Death on the Living. 'The weak are meat, the strong do eat.
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humanity
life
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David Mitchell |
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c085e7c
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I emerge into a library-study with the highest book-population density I have seen in my life. Book walls, book towers, book avenues, book side-streets. Book spillages, book rubble. Paperback books, hardcover books, atlases, manuals, almanacs. Nine lifetimes of books. Enough books to build an igloo to hide in, and then to hide the igloo. The room is sentient with books. Mirrors double and cube the books. A Great Wall of China quantity of bo..
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David Mitchell |
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9f403d8
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Us elderly are the modern lepers.
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David Mitchell |
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43e284b
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Another war is always coming, Robert. They are never properly extinguished. What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence is the instrument of this dreadful will. You can see the will to power in bedrooms, kitchens, factories, unions, and the borders of states. Listen to this and remember it. The nation-state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous pr..
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David Mitchell |
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e97c9ca
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European music is passionately savage, broken by long silences.
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David Mitchell |
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b1ce5e5
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Do either of you know clock patience? You have to add cards up to fifteen?
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David Mitchell |
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6117ac1
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To quote an early mentor," I tell the kid, " 'A journalist needs ratlike cunning, a plausible manner, and a little literary ability."
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David Mitchell |
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0e80385
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Three or four times only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, depressions, cold fronts, ill winds, and contrary tides ... I mistook them for adulthood. Assuming they were a fixed feature in my life's voyage, I neglected to record their latitude, their longitude, their approach. Young ruddy fool. What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an ..
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David Mitchell |
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7823919
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The woman was sincere--bigots mostly are--but no less dangerous for that, and she shall be named and shamed.
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David Mitchell |
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1fec955
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It's a small world. It keeps recrossing itself." 59"
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David Mitchell |
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21ea1e4
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all purebloods have a hunger, a dissatisfaction in their eyes,
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David Mitchell |
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423a502
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Humor is the ovum of dissent,
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David Mitchell |
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c1417ab
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So how does it feel?" is the reasonable question you hear a lot when your book completes the long ascent from production purgatory to movieplex."
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David Mitchell |
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188738b
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We-- by whom I mean anyone over sixty-- commit two offenses just by existing. One is Lack of Velocity. We drive too slowly, walk too slowly, talk too slowly. The world will do business with dictators, perverts, and drug barons of all stripes, but being slowed down it cannot abide.
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David Mitchell |
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3b2f509
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perpetual encagement endows any mirage of salvation with credibility. Ascension creates a hunger sharp enough to consume the subject's sanity,
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David Mitchell |
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ac9744c
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Crispin Hershey!" Lady Suze holds up both hands as if I'm the sun god Ra. "Your event was totes amazeballs! As they say."
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David Mitchell |
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c3e70f9
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In order to have sex, women need to feel loved; but in order for men to feel loved, we need to have sex.
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David Mitchell |