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80d7752
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I watched clouds awobbly from the floor ' that kayak. Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an' tho' a cloud's shape nor hue nor size don't stay the same, it's still a cloud an' so is a soul. Who can say where the cloud's blowed from or who the soul'll be 'morrow? Only Sonmi the east an' the west an' the compass an' the atlas, yay, only the atlas o'clouds.
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David Mitchell |
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73bd9d7
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We create models to explain nature, but the models wind up gatecrashing nature and driving away the original inhabitants.
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David Mitchell |
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9b41038
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Spring adds, summer multiplies, autumn subtracts, winter divides.
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David Mitchell |
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e32601f
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I am, emphatically. Mental illness triggered by xperimental error.
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David Mitchell |
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0430525
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Now and then goldfish splish and gleam, like new pennies dropped in water.
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David Mitchell |
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f4a03ac
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For most digital-age writers, writing rewriting. We grope, cut, block, paste, and twitch, panning for gold onscreen by deleting bucketloads of crap. Our analog ancestors had to polish every line mentally before hammering it out mechanically. Rewrites cost them months, meters of ink ribbon, and pints of Tippex. Poor sods.
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computers
technology
typewriters
word-processors
writers
writing
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David Mitchell |
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32733af
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A single night is stuffed with minutes, but they leak out, one by one.
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night
time
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David Mitchell |
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1cf549f
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When people listen they make a listening noise.
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David Mitchell |
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1a8ce84
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Problem was, all this is new. In English at school we study a grammar book by a man named Ronald Rideout, read Cider with Rosie, do debates on fox-hunting and memorize 'I Must Go Down to the Seas Again' by Jason Masefield. We don't have to actually think about stuff.
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David Mitchell |
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a39f187
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The night in question, I had put aside my perpetual lavatory read, , because of all the manuscripts (inedible green tomatoes) submitted to Cavendish-Redux, my new stable of champions. I suppose it was about eleven o'clock when I heard my front door being interfered with. Skinhead munchkins mug-or-treating? Cherry knockers? The wind? Next thing I knew, the door flew in off its ruddy hinges! I was thinking al-Queda, I was thinking ball light..
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mob
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David Mitchell |
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296a97c
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The world won't leave things be. It's always injecting endings into beginnings. Leaves tweezer themselves from these weeping willows. Leaves fall into the lake and dissolve into slime. Where's the sense in that? Mum and Dad fell in love, had Julia, had me. They fall out of love, Julia moves off to Edinburgh, Mum to Cheltenham, and Dad to Oxford with Cynthia. The world never stops unmaking what the world never stops making. But who says the ..
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David Mitchell |
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af00217
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I'm not good with the low-level unexplained. I worry at such things. I'm quite relaxed about the great mysteries of the universe; when it comes to the existence of God, for example, I figure that, as with a good episode of , I'll find out what's going on eventually.
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inspector-morse
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David Mitchell |
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1e9577f
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The truth is "#9dream" is a descendant of "Norwegian Wood". Both are ghost stories. "She" in "Norwegian Wood" curses you with loneliness. The "Two spirits dancing so strange" in "#9dream" bless you with harmony. But people prefer loneliness to harmony."
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loneliness
norwegian-wood
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David Mitchell |
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8ec4fad
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Do soldiers feel this, when they get back from a war? The utter weirdness of utter normality.
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David Mitchell |
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59b880e
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Clocks measure arbitrary meters of time, but not its speed. Nobody knows if time is speeding up, or slowing down. Nobody knows what it is. How much time is there in a day? Not how many hours, minutes, seconds: how much TIME do we have? This day?
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David Mitchell |
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8177ae8
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Ayrs let long moments fall away. 'You're young, Frobisher, you're rich, you've got a brain, and by all accounts you're not wholly repugnant. I'm not sure why you stay on here.'... ...Couldn't say if Ayrs felt humor, pity, nostalgia or scorn...Jocasta seemed angry with me. 'What?' I hissed. 'My husband loves you,' said the wife, dressing.
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David Mitchell |
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a0da9f2
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El poder, el tiempo, la gravedad, el amor. Las fuerzas que de verdad mueven el cotarro son invisibles.
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español
invisible
love
poder
power
spanish
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David Mitchell |
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fa90471
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Now I seen Mauna Kena from Honokaa b'fore, o'course, but a mountain you're planning on climbin' ain't the same as the one you ain't. It ain't so pretty, nay.
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David Mitchell |
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36c00b1
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She pulsed, invisibly, like a quasar. I can't describe women, but if you know Duke Pearson's 'After the rain', she was as beautiful and pure as that. Real things had happened to her to make her how she was and I wanted to know them, and read them, like a book.
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David Mitchell |
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42223f0
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My friend is composing an epic in Byronic stanzas entitled "True History of Autua, Last Moriori" & interrupts my journal writing to ask what rhymes with what: - "Streams of blood"? "Themes of mud"? "Robin Hood"?"
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David Mitchell |
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aa27691
|
The library refused many downloads, of course, but I succeeded with two Optimists translated from the Late English, Orwell and Huxley;
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optimism
|
David Mitchell |
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6a0d3bf
|
Hay tantas verdades como hombres. De vez en cuando, alcanzo a vislumbrar una Verdad mas verdadera, escondida entre simulacros imperfectos de si misma, pero en cuanto me acerco, se agita y se hunde mas todavia en la espinosa cienaga del desacuerdo.
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spanish
truth
verdad
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David Mitchell |
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69ea8d9
|
You can't go changing what you've already set down, not without botching things up even more
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David Mitchell |
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19c0354
|
After the nuclear war, kids like them'll rule what's left. It'll be hell.
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David Mitchell |
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1bf41a1
|
Lunatics are writers whose works write them, Bat." "Not all lunatics are writers, Mrs. Rey-believe me." "But most writers are lunatics, Bat-believe me. The human world is made up of stories, not people."
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stories
writing
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David Mitchell |
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a789ee5
|
Storytellers are not priests who commune with an ethereal realm but artisans, like dumpling makers, if somewhat slower.
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David Mitchell |
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0197fcc
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The potatoes were starch grenades. The canned carrots were revolting because that is their nature.
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humor
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David Mitchell |
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a4e29eb
|
Prejudice is permafrost
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David Mitchell |
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481713c
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Foolproof depends on the size of the fool
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David Mitchell |
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163220a
|
You underestimate humanity's ability to bring such evil into being.
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David Mitchell |
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8fed103
|
Tokyo is too close up to see, sometimes. There are no distances and everything is above your head - dentists, kindergartens, dance studios. Even the roads and walkways are up on murky stilts. An evil-twin Venice with all the water drained away.
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David Mitchell |
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6808ca6
|
Hell hell because, there, evil passes unremarked upon.
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hell
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David Mitchell |
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77d460a
|
In the corridor outside, a trolley squeaks by. The brigadier I knew has left his bombed-out face, leaving me alone with the clock, shelves of handsome books nobody ever reads, and one certainty: that whatever I do with my life, however much power, wealth, experience, knowledge, or beauty I'll accrue, I, too, will end up like this vulnerable old man. When I look at Brigadier Reginald Philby, I'm looking down time's telescope at myself.
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David Mitchell |
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3d9408a
|
The pursuit of insight takes you deep into the forest.
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David Mitchell |
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78984b7
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Our brains are dark globes lit by very distant stars.
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David Mitchell |
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b208acb
|
The truth is, deep ends cause drowning. Baptisms by fire cause third-degree burns.
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David Mitchell |
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2f7d484
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Faust tends not to have happy endings.
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happy-endings
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David Mitchell |
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e8eda2e
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Life's more science-fictiony by the day.
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science-fiction
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David Mitchell |
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627315e
|
You said you envied your uncritical, unthinking sisters. That's not quite the same as wishing to be one
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David Mitchell |
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e9e6dfc
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The human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature.
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human-nature
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David Mitchell |
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bc1e349
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The secret of happiness is to ignore your reflection in mirrors once you're over forty.
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happiness
mirrors
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David Mitchell |
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8ea220b
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Think larger. Redraw what is possible.
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possible
redraw
think
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David Mitchell |
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2d9d85e
|
Survival often demands our courage.
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life
survival
|
David Mitchell |
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ac0b556
|
A finite infinity,
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David Mitchell |