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bb7c0eb
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Are you what you believe yourself to be?
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David Mitchell |
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458f62d
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No wonder it's all such a fucking mess. I divided up my possible futures, put them into separate accounts, and now they're all spent. Big thoughts for a bent little lawyer.
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David Mitchell |
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6f8f4df
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The dust was deep and crisp and even.
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David Mitchell |
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c58c963
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Wars do not combust without warning. They begin as little fires over the horizon. Wars approach. A wise man watches for the smoke, and prepares to vacate the neighborhood, just like Ayrs and Jocasta. My worry is that the next war will be so big, nowhere with a decent restaurant will be left untouched.
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David Mitchell |
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6a34e92
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Rights are susceptible to subversion, as even granite is susceptible to erosion. My fifth Declaration posits how, in a cycle as old as tribalism, ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only "rights," the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful"
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rights
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David Mitchell |
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ee1d5c4
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Such inbred, bovine torpor!
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David Mitchell |
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ca65be0
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Without where I am from and who I am from, I am nothing, even if the glass is gone and conifers are growing through where the roof should be. All those wide-worlders in transit, all those misplaced, thrown-away people who know as little as they care about their roots--how do they do it? How do they know who they are?
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David Mitchell |
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c3ebdb9
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I looked gloomily into the murky lake at the bottom of my teacup, and
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David Mitchell |
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773ec77
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lip-chewed debtors rich in excuses; heard-it-all creditors tightening nooses; prisoners haunted by happier lives and ageing rakes by other men's wives; skeletal tutors goaded to fits; firemen-turned-looters when occasion permits; tongue-tied witnesses; purchased judges; mothers-in-law nurturing briars and grudges; apothecaries grinding powders with mortars; palanquins carrying not-yet-wed daughters; silent nuns; nine-year-old whores; the on..
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David Mitchell |
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e08346f
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the newborn; the growing; the strong-willed and pliant; the ailing; the dying; the weak and defiant; over the roof of a painter withdrawn first from the world, then his family, and down into a masterpiece that has, in the end, withdrawn from its creator;
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David Mitchell |
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eea27db
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Holly Sykes," says Publicity Girl, falling down the sar-chasm."
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David Mitchell |
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0cf2bd4
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On an impulse he cannot explain, he buys himself a one-way ticket - and the evening of that very same day finds him wandering the streets of the old colonial quarter of the Colombian town. Girls in love with boys on scooters, screeching birds, tropical flowers on winding vines, saudade, and solitude, One Hundred Years of it; and then, as the tropical dusk darkens the corners of the Plaza de la Adana, he sees a woman, her fingers toying with..
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David Mitchell |
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bebd902
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I play chess on my iPhone, and indulge in a fond fantasy that my opponent isn't a mind of digital code but Dad: It's Dad's attacks I repel; Dad's defenses I dismantle; Dad's king scurrying around the board to prolong the inevitable.
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David Mitchell |
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b41b59d
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We're sliding into a society where the first thing you need to do to demonstrate that you're any good at something is to say that you are. Under the old rules, boasts were assumed empty until proved otherwise. You had to impress with your actions, draw attention to yourself subtly without being seen to do so. It's a hell of a lot more fun than the pantomime of self-belief we see on reality TV today. A society where you're not allowed to blo..
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David Mitchell |
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eb55a46
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Trees, their incremental gymnastics and noisy silence, are another wonder of Outside to me.
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David Mitchell |
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43cbe18
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The days when I had that kind of spondulics at my beck and call are gone, gone, gone! Our house is mortgaged, twice over!
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David Mitchell |
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01f4828
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It is a cycle as old as tribalism. In the beginning there is ignorance. Ignorance engenders fear. Fear engenders hatred, and hatred engenders violence. Violence breeds further violence until the only law is whatever is willed by the most powerful.
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David Mitchell |
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bbe4ce2
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What's the book like?" "Well, some of it's twaddle, but mostly it's just piffle. Cheers!" --
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piffle
twaddle
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David Mitchell |
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7ce23cb
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Then the true true is diff'rent to the seemin' true? said I. Yay, an' it usually is, I mem'ry Meronym sayin', an' that's why true true is presher'n'rarer'n diamonds.
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David Mitchell |
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a196ccb
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Because the script was written referring not to Iraq as it was, but to a fantasy Iraq as Rumsfeld, Rice, and Bush et al. wanted it to be, or dreamt it to be, or were promised by their pet Iraqis-in-exile it would be. They expected to find a unified state like Japan in 1945. Instead, they found a perpetual civil war among majority Shi'a Arabs, minority Sunni Arabs, and Kurds. Saddam Hussein--a Sunni--had imposed a brutal peace on the country..
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David Mitchell |
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fdb36e4
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Forty minutes, times sixty seconds, that's twenty-four thousand seconds to go.
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David Mitchell |
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73e1ac2
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Soviet imperialism's as bad as American capitalism.
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David Mitchell |
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1e3efd6
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This is peace, if you think about it--machine-gun nests being used as picnic tables.
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David Mitchell |
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a4bb8b5
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Brainchild" is an odd word. You hear it a lot in explanatory voiceovers and I suppose I was trying to join in, but I don't really like it. I'm not keen on the idea that my brain could have a child. Would it be made of brain - a child, made of grey brain, like a squelchy zombie? As metaphors for inspiration go, I prefer the lightbulb."
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David Mitchell |
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a3fd80e
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Writing novels worth reading will bugger up your mind, jeopardize your relationships, and distend your life.
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David Mitchell |
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6d04224
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Or else rip out the odd pages and leave me the even.
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David Mitchell |
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51509e5
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Heresy is fissiparous, however.
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David Mitchell |
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7686793
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The sequence of doors we passed made me think of all the rooms of my past and future. The hospital ward I was born in, classrooms, tents, churches, offices, hotels, museums, nursing homes, the room I'll die in. (Has it been built yet?)
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David Mitchell |
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a201461
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A blue jay swoops onto a fungus-ruffled tree-stump by Hershey's grave, emits a volley of harsh jeers, then a breathy trill.
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David Mitchell |
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b1151cb
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The blue jay threads a flight-path through stripes of brightness and stripes of mossy dark.
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David Mitchell |
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1b2a6ea
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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.
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David Mitchell |
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8e00a2e
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A hairy beggar kneeling by a puddle of vomit turns out to be a dog.
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David Mitchell |
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1139881
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they stand still as the world eddies about them.
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David Mitchell |
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7711364
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The empowered may serve justice, remodel the Earth, transform lush nations into smoking battlefields, and bring down skyscrapers, but power itself is amoral.
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David Mitchell |
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3b6b706
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So we surrender to stupidity, do we?" Freedom of speech is sacrificed at the altar of manufactured rage."
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David Mitchell |
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8bb4dda
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Sometimes," Brubeck bites into an apple, "sometimes I want to be everywhere, all at once, so badly I could just ..." Brubeck mimes a bomb going off in his ribcage. "Do you never get that feeling?"
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David Mitchell |
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3298acb
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Miguel tries to look jokey-penitent, but misses and looks like a man in white jeans who underestimates a spot of flatulence.
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David Mitchell |
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0bfe78b
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Remember that a sincere apology never diminishes the apologizer.
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David Mitchell |
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bc9f89e
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But it's not time that matters. It felt ... like a secret place just us two knew about.
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David Mitchell |
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7d00e28
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The minutes jog up the down escalator.
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david mitchell |
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a5421d4
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Dawn Madden's got cruel eyes like a Chinese empress and sometimes one glimpse at school makes me think about her all day.
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David Mitchell |
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bada134
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The second tunnel's a Ministry of Defence tunnel...dug for a nuclear bomb shelter. The entrance is in the garden center at Woolworth's in Great Malvern...When the four-minute warning goes off, the Ministry of Defence lot at the RSRE'll be ferried up to Woolies by the military police. Councillors from Malvern Council'll be allowed in, so will Woolworth's manager and assistant manager. Then the military police...They'll grab one or two of the..
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David Mitchell |
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c77c5b2
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Her oil-black hair's sort of punky. She must use gel. I'd love to gel her gel in for her.
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David Mitchell |
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a48ba9f
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Orito pictures the human mind that weaves disparate threads of belief, memory, and narrative into an entity whose common name is Self, and which sometimes calls itself Perception.
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David Mitchell |