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f44b39a
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A man like me has no business with this substance "beauty," yet here she is, in these soundproofed chambers of my heart."
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David Mitchell |
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6f1e924
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Tonight feels like a board game co-designed by M. C. Escher on a bender and Stephen King in a fever.
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David Mitchell |
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fe9f624
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A sprinkle of last-minute despair gives a soul an agreeably earthy aftertaste.
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David Mitchell |
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90a5ad0
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Sometimes John had recorded new compositions, or lines from his new poems. Sometimes he'd just record a busy night in The Green Man. Sometimes sheep, seals, skylarks, the wind turbine. If Liam were home there would be some Liam. The summer fair. The Fastnet Race. I would unfold my map of Clear Island. Those tapes prised the lid off homesickness and rattled out the contents, but always at the bottom was solace.
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solace
homesickness
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David Mitchell |
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9827b14
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Our weaponry was not dropped onto our laps one morning. It is not manna from Sinai's skies. Since Agincourt, the White man has refined & evolved the gunpowder sciences until our modern armies may field muskets by the tens of thousands! Aha!' you will ask, yes, 'But why us Aryans? Why not the Unipeds of Ur or the Mandrakes of Mauritius?' Because, Preacher, of all the world's races, our love--or rather our rapacity--for treasure, gold, spices..
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ladder-of-cvilization
musket
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David Mitchell |
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1356efb
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Books tended not to switch their stories whenever it suited them.
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David Mitchell |
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4dda3aa
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Like the best songs, you can't see the next line coming, but once it's sung, how else could it have gone?
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David Mitchell |
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d26033d
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What a uniquely capitalist response to that gender inequality: women have been forced by convention for generations - millennia - to spend money on expensive clothes and agonising shoes, to daub themselves with reality-concealing slap, to smell expensively inhuman, to self-mutilate in pursuit of eternal youth; and this, quite rightly, has come to be deemed unfair. But how do we end this hell? We make men do it too. Well done everyone.
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David Mitchell |
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c9539ba
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As Seneca warned Nero: No matter how many of us you kill, you will never kill your successor.
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David Mitchell |
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be43b84
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Bitch" is a stingless insult these days - it hurts like, I don't know, a celery-stabbing."
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David Mitchell |
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acaaced
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La segunda ley de la supervivencia afirma que no existe una segunda ley. O comes o te comen. Punto.
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spanish
ley
law
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David Mitchell |
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a5ca119
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I'd love to know how Dad saw me when I was a kid. I'd love to know a hundred things. When a parent dies, a filing cabinet full of all the fascinating stuff also ceases to exist. I never imagined how hungry I'd be one day to look inside it.
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David Mitchell |
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b252b4b
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Twenty million people live and work in Tokyo. It's so big that nobody really knows where it stops. It's long since filled up the plain, and now it's creeping up the mountains to the west and reclaiming land from the bay in the east. The city never stops rewriting itself. In the time one street guide is produced, it's already become out of date. It's a tall city, and a deep one, as well as a spread-out one. Things are always moving below you..
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David Mitchell |
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6b847a3
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Loyalty looks simple... but it ain't.
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David Mitchell |
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068d6c8
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Life is sheer bliss when it wants to be.
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David Mitchell |
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21e7f48
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The glances musicians exchange, when music is effortless, that was what he wanted from Milly, that intimacy.
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David Mitchell |
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8f0efbe
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British Airways: "No one is actually going to save the environment, so you might as well enjoy it while it lasts." --
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David Mitchell |
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b35505e
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Memory Serves." Duplicitous couplet."
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David Mitchell |
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8c86ddb
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The conflict between corporations and activists is that of narcolepsy versus remembrance. The corporations have money, power, and influence. Our weapon is public outrate.
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David Mitchell |
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458d73d
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During those nine pouched-up months, what do babies imagine? Gills, swamps, battlefields? To people in wombs, what is imagined and what is real must be one and the same.
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David Mitchell |
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1ebbfbd
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Disco's are tricky. You look a total wally if you dance too early but after one crucial song tips the disco over, you look a sad saddo if you don't.
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music
humor
disco
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David Mitchell |
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80374b7
|
Killing depends on circumstances, as you'd expect, whether it's a cold, planned murder, or a hot death in a fight, or inspired by honor or a more shameful motive. However many times you kill, though, it's the first that matters. It's a man's first blood that banishes him from the world of the ordinary.
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David Mitchell |
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3460081
|
To get the crowd to cry Hosanna, you must first ride to town on an ass.
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David Mitchell |
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e37d49b
|
Scholars discern motions of 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 and virtuous acts. What precipitates acts? Belief.
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David Mitchell |
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7cb6833
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Quienquiera que se inventase eso de que el dinero no hace la felicidad, se regocija Lloyd Hooks, esta claro que no tenia bastante.
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money
spanish
happiness
felicidad
español
|
David Mitchell |
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6b058e8
|
This morn I awoke to the laments of fallen angels.
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David Mitchell |
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66204ab
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So many things there are to know. Most things happen because of mistakes.
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David Mitchell |
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63d9a4a
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For most of my life, the world shrank and technology progressed; this was the natural order of things. Few of us clocked on that "the natural order of things" is entirely man-made, and that a world that kept expanding as technology regressed was not only possible but waiting in the wings."
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David Mitchell |
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2977b82
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But it wasn't us, personally, who trashed the world," says Mo. "It was the system. We couldn't change it." "Then it's not us, personally, taking your panels," says Hood. "It's the system. We can't change it."
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David Mitchell |
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16cb225
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Snarling an oath from an Icelandic saga, I reclaimed my place at the head of the queue. "Oy!" yelled a punk rocker, with studs in his cranium. "There's a fackin' queue!" Never apologize, advises Lloyd George. Say it again, only this time, ruder. "I know there's a 'fackin' queue'! I already queued in it once and I am going to queue in it again just because Nina Simone over there won't sell me a ruddy ticket!" A colored yeti in a clip-on u..
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racism
humor
punk
skinhead
london
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David Mitchell |
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a014262
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Dr. Upward was one of those Academy Award-winning Asses of Arrogance you find in educational administration, law or medicine.
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David Mitchell |
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579cc86
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both circumvented the handicap of deafness by answering only those questions they believed had been asked & accepting only those answers they believed had been uttered - a stratagem embraced by many an American advocate)
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selective-hearing
willful-ignorance
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David Mitchell |
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cdb51e7
|
Pity is a form of abuse.'
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David Mitchell |
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70c2345
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Adverbs are cholesterol in the veins of prose.
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David Mitchell |
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e4a7352
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I feel sad that I found what I searched for, but no longer want what I found.
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David Mitchell |
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06c4079
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Shiroyama's heart stops. The earth's pulse beats against his ear. An inch away is a go clamshell stone, perfect and smooth ... ... a black butterfly lands on the white stone, and unfolds its wings.
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life
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David Mitchell |
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1675e58
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Power is the ability to make someone do what they otherwise wouldn't, or deter them from doing what they otherwise would.
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David Mitchell |
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b54a4f4
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An abyss cannot be crossed in two steps.
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David Mitchell |
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9d48722
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Beg pardon?" I detected large deposits of vanity. Vanity is the softest of bedrocks to sink shafts into."
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David Mitchell |
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eba3546
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This is my moral. Trust what you dream. Not what you think.
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David Mitchell |
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b63478a
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Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan't know until it's finished, and by then it'll be too late, but it's the first thing I think of when I wake, and the last thing I think of before I fall asleep, even if J. is in my bed. She should understand, the artist lives in two worlds.
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David Mitchell |
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a100357
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marriage can, should, and must evolve. Don't be alarmed, and don't resent it. Be patient and kind, unflaggingly. In the long run, it's the unasked-for hot-water bottles on winter nights that matter more than the extravagant gestures.
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David Mitchell |
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a33a79f
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Rootlessness," I opine, "is the twenty-first century norm." "You're not wrong and that's why we're in the shit we're in, mate. If you belong nowhere, why give a tinker's toss about anywhere?"
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rootlessness
community
home
|
David Mitchell |
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d1eeccd
|
You look for your meaning. You find it, and at that moment, your meaning changes, and you have to start all over again.
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David Mitchell |