|
c421394
|
Creation never ceased on the sixth evening, it occurs to the young man. Creation unfolds around us, despite us and through us at the speed of days and nights. And we call it love.
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
9d2709c
|
So little is actually worthy of belief or disbelief. Better to strive to coexist than seek to disapprove . . .
|
|
coexistence
|
David Mitchell |
|
8211541
|
A weapon men use against women is the refusal to take them seriously.
|
|
women
women-s-inspirational
women-and-men
|
David Mitchell |
|
1570beb
|
it's not just the person who fills a house, it's their I'll be back later!s, their toothbrushes and unused hats and coats, their belongingnesses.
|
|
lonely-people
missing
missing-someone
missing-you
lonely
|
David Mitchell |
|
bd01480
|
Behold your future, Cavendish the Younger. You will not apply for membership, but the tribe of the elderly will claim you. Your present will not keep pace with the world's. This slippage will stretch your skin, sag your skeleton, erode your hair and memory, make your skin turn opaque so your twitching organs and blue-cheese veins will be semivisible. You will venture out only in daylight, avoiding weekends and school holidays. Language, too..
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
859696d
|
Un libro leido a medias es una aventura amorosa incompleta.
|
|
spanish
reading
books
love
leer
libro
libros
book
español
lectura
|
David Mitchell |
|
1e956e3
|
You can maintain power over people, as long as you give them something. Rob a man of everything, and that man will no longer be in your power.
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
ceafeeb
|
if you could reason with religious people, there wouldn't be any religious people.
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
1dd23a4
|
Autumn is leaving its mellowness behind for its spiky, rotted stage. Don't remember summer even saying goodbye.
|
|
summer
|
David Mitchell |
|
8aa32a1
|
There's a link between bigotry and bad spelling.
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
8ed3cc6
|
While the wealthy are no more likely to be born stupid than the poor, a wealthy upbringing compounds stupidity while a hardscrabble childhood dilutes it, if only for Darwinian reasons. This is why the elite need a prophylactic barrier of shitty state schools, to prevent the clever kids from the working-class post codes ousting them from the Enclave of Privilege.
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
0ee502d
|
The world never stops unmaking what the world never stops making. But who says the world has to make sense?
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
cabc771
|
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.
|
|
writing
music
self-referential
|
David Mitchell |
|
8b4787f
|
The Ghost of Sir Felix Finch whines, "But it's been done a hundred times before!"--as if there could be anything done a hundred times between Aristophanes and Andrew Void-Webber! As if Art is the , not the !"
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
148c1ec
|
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
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
5436ead
|
Men invented money Women invented mutual aid
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
afa1957
|
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 proportions. QED, nations are entities whose laws are written by violence. Thu..
|
|
violence
war
|
David Mitchell |
|
620163d
|
maybe the meaning of life lies in looking for it
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
d1c7fd2
|
Modesty is Vanity's craftier stepbrother.
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
ac3a21c
|
over 85% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
6ebbf30
|
I elbowed my way into the grubby cafe, bought a pie that tasted of shoe polish and a pot of tea with cork crumbs floating in it, and eavesdropped on a pair of Shetland pony breeders. Despondency makes one hanker after lives one never led. Why have you given your life to books, TC? Dull, dull, dull! The memoirs are bad enough, but all that ruddy fiction! Hero goes on a journey, stranger comes to town, somebody wants something, they get it or..
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
1d513b9
|
If only,' Shiroyama dreams, 'human beings were not masks behind masks behind masks. If only this world was a clean board of lines and intersections. If only time was a sequence of considered moves and not a chaos of slippages and blunders.
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
d00993e
|
Freedom!- is the fatuous jingle of our civilization, but only those deprived of it have the barest inkling re: what the stuff actually is.
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
0e841e0
|
If an atrocity isn't written about, it stops existing when the last witnesses die. That's what I can't stand. If a mass shooting, a bomb, a whatever, is written about, then at least it's made a tiny dent in the world's memory. Someone, somewhere, some time, has a chance of learning what happened. And, just maybe, acting on it. Or not. But at least it's there.
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
1eb5d68
|
Women, oh, women! They'll find the baddest meanin' in your words an' hold it up, sayin', Look what you attacked me with!
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
ddfea5d
|
People are masks, with masks under those masks, and masks under those, and down you go.
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
8a22bb3
|
I remain thankful to God for all his mercies.
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
56da1be
|
Little girls are like old cats. If they don't like you nothing on Earth will make them pretend to.
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
63d5ee7
|
Once any tyranny becomes accepted as ordinary, its victory is assured.
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
31640dc
|
Eva knows I'm terra incognita and explores me unhurriedly, like you did. Because she's lean as a boy. Because her scent is almonds, meadow grass. Because if I smile at her ambition to be an Egyptologist, she kicks my shin under the table. Because she makes me think about something other than myself. Because even when serious she shines. Because she prefers travelogues to Sir Walter Scott, prefers Billy Mayerl to Mozart, and couldn't tell a ..
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
199aae5
|
If life didn't change, it wouldn't be life, it'd be a photograph.
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
57ce3ae
|
The act of memory is an act of ghostwriting.
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
67095d8
|
Do ants get headaches?
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
303cd49
|
Mother used to say escape is never further than the nearest book. Well, Mumsy, no, not really. Your beloved large-print sagas of rags, riches, and heartbreak were no camouflage against the miseries trained on you by the tennis ball launcher of life, were they? But, yes, Mum, there again, you have a point. Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
a50b25d
|
If war's first victim is truth, its second is clerical efficiency.
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
be3db3e
|
Folks with most to complain about seldom complain most.
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
af073eb
|
He was doing quite well until the last sentence, but if you bare your arse to a vengeful unicorn, the number of possible outcomes dwindles to one.
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
bd64c52
|
I lost my balance when the train pulled away, but a human crumple zone buffered my fall. We stayed like that, half fallen. Diagonal People.
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
1327447
|
Persuasion is not about force; it's about showing a person a door, and making him or her desperate to open it.
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
f75b85c
|
It'll be all right." Julia's gentleness makes it worse. "In the end, Jace." "It doesn't feel very all right." "That's because it's not the end."
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
aad197d
|
I think about pinball, and how being a kid's like being shot up the firing lane and there's no veering left or right; or you're just sort of propelled. But once you clear the top, like when you're sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen, suddenly there's a thousand different paths you can take, some amazing, others not. Tiny little differences in angles and speed'll totally alter what happens to you later, so a fraction of an inch to the right, and..
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
b5deefc
|
This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself.
|
|
|
David Mitchell |
|
ca4fb26
|
Italians give their city sexes, and they all agree that the sex for a particular city is quite correct, but none of them can explain why. I love that. London's middle-aged and male, respectably married but secretly gay.
|
|
sex
names
|
David Mitchell |
|
7ea754c
|
Creation unfolds, around us, despite us and through us, at the speed of days and nights, and we like to call it "love"
|
|
|
David Mitchell |