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0b8efe2
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Words are very powerful and can lead anyone reading them or hearing them, into contemplation and insight. How the mind follows suit is rarely palpable or expected. This impact is not a matter of metaphysical effects nor of an unexplainable phenomenon. It's simply part of being human.
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David Mitchell |
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c7ef268
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Books'll be back," Esther-in-Unalaq predicts. "Wait till the power grids start failing in the 2030s and the datavats get erased. It's not far away. The future looks a lot like the past."
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future
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David Mitchell |
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325dd55
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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. Our second offence is being Everyman's memento mori. The world can only get comfy in shiny-eyed denial if we are out of sight.
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David Mitchell |
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7a4fcfc
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Naming, thinks Jacob, even in ridicule, gives what is named substance.
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David Mitchell |
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5c84d6c
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Don't let death, Jacob reproves himself, be your final thought.
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David Mitchell |
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9be04f5
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The world's twenty-seven richest people own more wealth than the poorest five billion, and people accept that as normal.
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David Mitchell |
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f4336d9
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Humans live in a pit of cheating, exploiting, hurting, incarcerating. Every time, the species wastes some part of what it could be. This waste is poisonous.
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David Mitchell |
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30647ef
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I have always unswervingly held, that God, in our civilizing world, manifests Himself not in the miracles of biblical age, but in progress. It is progress that leads humanity up the ladder towards the God-head. No Jacob's ladder this, no, but rather Civilization's Ladder, if you will.
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god
humanity
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David Mitchell |
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904c9c3
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The rain's innumerable hooves spatter on the streets and roofs.
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David Mitchell |
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1688b73
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Coffee's the elixir of life.
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David Mitchell |
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9d2f25a
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I wonder how many years Suga has been carrying his curse around with him. I forget that other people in the world have broken parts too.
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David Mitchell |
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8d26f63
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La risa es una blasfemia anarquica. Los tiranos hacen bien en temerla.
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David Mitchell |
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84607f9
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Sometimes language can't even read the music of meaning.
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language
music
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David Mitchell |
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e9afa9c
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I have no earliest memories, Archivist. Every day of my life in Papa Song was as uniform as the fries we vended.
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David Mitchell |
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94b46ef
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The body is the outermost layer of the mind.
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mind
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David Mitchell |
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966339c
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Our ancestors built temples for their gods. We build department stores.
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David Mitchell |
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e52e23b
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Can I just ask for an outline -" "Doesn't work like that. You need a leap of faith to leave your old life behind. True metamorphosis doesn't come with flowcharts."
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metamorphosis
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David Mitchell |
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47d7a86
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Time in the wood's older than time in clocks, and truer.
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David Mitchell |
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ee5a3fd
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What man ain't the honestest cove in his own eyes?" Grote's round face is a bronze moon in the dark. "'Tain't good intentions what paves the road to hell: it's self-justifyin's."
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honesty
self-justification
self-perception
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David Mitchell |
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7a3c692
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Surgeons are a singular brotherhood, Adam. To us, people aren't sacred beings crafted in the Almighty's image, no, people are joints of meat; diseased, leathery meat, yes, but meat ready for the skewer & the spit." He mimicked my usual voice, very well. "'But why *me*, Henry, are we not friends?' Well, Adam, even friends are made out of meat."
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friendship
life
meat
murder
surgeon
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David Mitchell |
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e004f28
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clocks in disagreement are worse than no clock at all.
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David Mitchell |
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57e3823
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I'd always worried but kissing's not so tricky. Your lips know what to do, just like sea anenomes know what to do. Kissing spins you, like Flying Tea-Cups. Oxygen the girl breathes out, you breathe in.
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kissed
kissing
kissing-quotes
love
teenage-love
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David Mitchell |
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9c4062d
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It's the edges of the maps that fascinate ...
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maps
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David Mitchell |
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adfdf55
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The song instantly insisted it'd never existed.
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David Mitchell |
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1669d8d
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Empires die, like all of us dancers in the strobe-lit dark. See how the light needs shadows. Look: wrinkles spread like mildew over our peachy sheen; beat-by-beat-by-beat-by-beat-by-beat-by-beat, varicose veins worm through plucked calves; torsos and breasts fatten and sag...as last year's song hurtles into next year's song and the year after that, and the dancers' hairstyles frost, wither, and fall in chemotherapeutic tufts; cancer spatter..
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David Mitchell |
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93d9bfe
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Who was blowing on the nape of my neck.
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David Mitchell |
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a071821
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Two old people in a room devoid of furniture, steam rising from their teacups. They were motionless and expressionless. Waiting for something. I wish I could go into their room and sit down with them. I'd give them my Rolex for that. I wish they would smile, and pour me a cup of jasmine tea. I wish the world was like that.
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David Mitchell |
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b5929dc
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Perpetual encagement endows any mirage of salvation with credibility.
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David Mitchell |
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4e98389
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We were, to quote the proverb, "The one dog who barks at nothing answered by a thousand dogs barking at something..." --
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David Mitchell |
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7652003
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All these people like my mother paying counselors and clinics to reattach them to reality; all of us people here paying Sony and Sega to reattach us to unreality.
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David Mitchell |
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55c1fd6
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Politicians and sports coaches both need to be smart enough to master the game, but dumb enough to think it matters.
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David Mitchell |
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d0c50a4
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Only the trombonist played on. That's trombonists for you.
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David Mitchell |
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70a377b
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It was a morning for Ella Fitzgerald. There are fine things in the world, after all. Dignity, refinement, warmth and humour, where you'd never expect to find them. Even as an old woman, an amputee in a wheelchair, Ella sang like a girl who could still be at high school, falling in love for the first time"."
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David Mitchell |
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53b0bd3
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Humor is the ovum of dissent, and the Juche should fear it.
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David Mitchell |
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0ff854f
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Luisa rolls her napkin into a compact ball. "I ask three simple questions. How did he get that power? How is he using it? And how can it be taken off the sonofabitch?"
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power
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David Mitchell |
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4738313
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but it is attitude, not years, that condemns one to the ranks of the Undead, or else proffers salvation. In the domain of the young there dwells many an Undead soul. They rush about so, their inner putrefaction is concealed for a few decades, that is all.
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David Mitchell |
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6718718
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I find a certain comfort," confesses Marinus, "in humanity's helplessness."
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helplessness
humanity
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David Mitchell |
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7c9ef23
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Dreamt I stood in a china shop so crowded from floor to far-off ceiling with shelves of porcelain antiques, etc. that moving a muscle would cause several to fall and smash to bits. Exactly what happened but instead of a crashing noise, an august chord rang out, half cello, half celeste, D major (?), held for four beats. My wrist knocked a Ming vase affair off its pedestal-E flat. Whole string section, glorious, transcendant, angels wept. De..
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David Mitchell |
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4a0afc0
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The clock's pendulum catches the firelight, and in the rattle-breathed final moments of Jacob de Zoet, amber shadows in the far corner coagulate into a woman's form. She slips between the bigger, taller onlookers unnoticed ... ... and adjusts her headscarf, the better to hide her burn. She places her cool palms on Jacob's fever-glazed face. Jacob sees himself, when he was young, in her narrow eyes. Her lips touch the place between his e..
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David Mitchell |
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b3c995b
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Astronomers at the University of Bullshitshire have just found new evidence that, yes, teenagers really are the center of the universe.'
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David Mitchell |
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6767b65
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escape is never further than the nearest book
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David Mitchell |
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128a566
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Why tinker with the plain truth that we hurry the darker races to their graves in order to take their land & its riches? Wolves don't sit in their caves, concocting crapulous theories of race to justify devouring a flock of sheep! "Intellectual courage"? True "intellectual courage" is to dispense with these fig leaves & admit all peoples are predatory, but White predators, with our deadly duet of disease dust & firearms, are examplars of pr..
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justify
predators
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David Mitchell |
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dd3300d
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I libri non offrono una vera via di fuga, ma possono impedire alla mente di scorticarsi viva.
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David Mitchell |
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c9eebd5
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Eavesdropping's sort of thrilling 'cause you learn what people really think, but eavesdropping makes you miserable for exactly the same reason.
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David Mitchell |