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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 1e83e25 | I managed to smile, thinking how Modesty is Vanity's craftier stepbrother. | David Mitchell | ||
| b1b1e15 | Yet what are we without our addictions? Insipid. Flavourless. | David Mitchell | ||
| 9d0e66d | Our right to be here is weaker by the minute. | David Mitchell | ||
| 5d09e3b | Do we use the L-word because we mean it, or because we want to kid ourselves into thinking we're still in that blissful state? | David Mitchell | ||
| a035924 | But the paranormal is persuasive; why else does religion persist? | David Mitchell | ||
| 370693b | Hesitations're yeses or nos if the questioner already knows the answer. | David Mitchell | ||
| c9a208a | These...xistential qualms you suffer, they just mean you're truly human. I aked how I might remedy them. "You don't remedy them. You live thru them." | stoicism | David Mitchell | |
| c11b66d | Laboring types surrounded me with bad teeth, parrot voices, and unfounded optimism. | David Mitchell | ||
| ef44bb3 | Grin and bear it! Remember your heritage! You're a Japanese law-abiding straight! You grin and bear it until your Zimmer frame buckles and your drinking water is mercury oxide, and our whole country is one coast-to-coast parking lot. | david mitchell | ||
| eb0e5f6 | Your employers evince great faith in your talents, Mr Ewing, to entrust you with business neccessitating such a long & arduous voyage." I replied that, yes, I was a senior enough notary to be entrusted with my present assignment, but a junior enough scrivener to be obligated to accept the same." | David Mitchell | ||
| c577cc3 | Yet the way men live is so far removed from the way they ought to live that anyone who abandons what 'is' for what 'should be' pursues his downfall rather than his preservation; | David Mitchell | ||
| 80ce52c | There's no future in stories...Stories are things of the past, things for museums. | stories | David Mitchell | |
| 8838436 | Your leaders must know powerful magic. Yes, said one of the women. The magic is called Marx, Stalin, Lenin and Class Dialectics. It didn't sound like very powerful magic to me. | marxism | David Mitchell | |
| 92ad060 | A rocker rose like Poseidon and flexed his knuckles. | David Mitchell | ||
| 3a71015 | Our will to power, our science, and those v. faculties that elevated us from apes, to savages, to modern man, are the same faculties that'll snuff out Homo sapiens before this century is out! | David Mitchell | ||
| 646950e | Love's a dictator. I know this, yet the blast furnace in my ribcage roars You You You You You You just the same, and there's bugger-all I can do about it. | David Mitchell | ||
| 25cabb0 | Today's the day I either change my life or I don't. | David Mitchell | ||
| e935ade | Speak to me about power. What is it?" I do believe I'm being out-Cambridged. "You want me to discuss power? Right here and now?" Her shapely head tilts. "No time except the present." "Okay." Only for a ten. "Power is the ability to make someone do what they otherwise wouldn't, or deter them from doing what they otherwise would." Immaculee Constantin is unreadable. "How?" "By coercion and reward. Carrots and sticks, though in bad light .. | David Mitchell | ||
| c9f65fe | Temple of the Rat King. Ark of the Soot God. Sphincter of Hades. Yes, King's Cross Station, where, according to , a blow job costs only five quid - any of the furthest-left three cubicles in the men's lavvy downstairs, twenty-four hours a day. | london prostitution trains | David Mitchell | |
| e3ef664 | love is fusion in the sun's core. Love is a blurring of pronouns. Love is subject and object. The difference between its presence and its absence is the difference between life and death. | David Mitchell | ||
| 858c11d | Linda shares her packet of Custard Creams with me, and Marion says "Picking is hungry work" in her bunged up voice, and I say, "Yeah, it is, Marion," and Marion's really happy, and I wish her life could be easier than it's going to be." | David Mitchell | ||
| f7cd6b8 | Human beings are walking bundles of cravings. Cravings for food, water, shelter, warmth; sex and companionship; status, a tribe to belong to; kicks, control, purpose; and so on, all the way down toe chocolate-brown bathroom suites. Love is one way to satisfy some of these cravings. But love's not just the drug; it's also the dealer. Love wants love in return. Like drugs, the highs look divine, and I envy the users. But when the side effects.. | David Mitchell | ||
| 2fb90c3 | Two thoughts walked into my place. The first thought said that we hadn't slept together because sex would have closed an entrance behind us and opened an exit ahead of us. The second thought told me quite clearly what to do. Maybe Takeshi's wife was right--maybe it is unsafe to base an important decision on your feelings for a person. Takeshi says the same thing often enough. Every bonk, he says, quadruples in price by the morning after. Bu.. | David Mitchell | ||
| fdc084c | How lazily "xperts" dismiss what they fail to understand! I," | David Mitchell | ||
| 39b9070 | I loved Vinny like he was a part of me, and he loved me like a stick of gum. He'd spat me out when the flavor went, unwrapped another, and stuffed it in, and not just anyone, but Stella Yearwood. My best mate. | David Mitchell | ||
| 48101cc | The present is a battleground . . . where rival what-ifs compete to become the future 'what-is.' How does one what-if prevail over its adversaries? The answer . . . 'Military and political power, of course!' is a postponement, for what is it that directs the minds of the powerful? The answer is 'belief.' Beliefs that are ignoble or idealistic; democratic or Confucian; Occidental or Oriental; timid or bold; clearsighted or delusional. Power .. | power | David Mitchell | |
| e047f58 | But Ed Brubeck's a guy, like Vinny's a guy, and guys are all sperm-guns. | David Mitchell | ||
| c81ae52 | Listening to houses breathe makes you feel weightless. | David Mitchell | ||
| 1afdfbe | 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. | David Mitchell | ||
| a8d3e0c | So who's expired in an ending flat and inane quite beyond belief now? | David Mitchell | ||
| f30fab3 | One loses one's eye in the lanes of sea phosphorescence & the Mississippi of stars streaming across the heavens. | David Mitchell | ||
| 9f18907 | That's the problem with boys: They tend to help you only 'cause they fancy you, but there's no unembarrassing way to find out their real motives till it's too late. | David Mitchell | ||
| 783f366 | A time is one's own, Eva, when oneself and one's peers take the same things for granted, without thinking about it. Likewise, a man is ruined when the times change but he does not. Permit me to add, empires fall for the same reason. | David Mitchell | ||
| ab1ac06 | There was a further, rather crazy reason why Neil was my dream batsman. In the 1950s, pop music was innocent and melodic. Top among the vocalists who escorted me through my youth was little Guy Mitchell. That plaintive, joyous, carefree voice gave us and , crystal-clear melodies that lifted and sustained anxious teenagers, exactly as did Neil Harvey's dainty batsmanship. Neil was a study in cream: no commercial logos then (least of all a.. | David Frith | ||
| 219fcad | Only the inanimate can be so alive. | David Mitchell | ||
| e734d8d | A handful of gems from Somni: "One's environment is a key to one's identity." "An impulse can be both vaguely understood and strong." "What is knowledge for, if not used to better our/one's existence?" "My IQ may be higher but she looked more content then I felt." | David Mitchell | ||
| 9d46242 | Tan solo tres o cuatro veces en mis anos mozos divise fugazmente las islas de la Dicha antes de que se esfumaran en la niebla, en las borrascas, entre frentes frios, vendavales y mareas en contra... Las tome equivocadamente por la condicion adulta. Di por hecho que serian una presencia constante en mi trayecto vital y no me preocupe de anotar la latitud, la longitud, la ruta de recalada. Maldito jovenzuelo idiota. Lo que daria ahora por ten.. | David Mitchell | ||
| e701c20 | Believe nothing till it's officially denied. | David Mitchell | ||
| c6f0602 | Was there anything under those lids? Remorse, resentment, even indifference? Or was there only nothing? Nothing often poses in men as wisdom. | David Mitchell | ||
| 50a44e8 | Unmix that conditional and smoke it. | David Mitchell | ||
| 78a5b1a | All the seats were taken, and I had to squeeze into a three-inch slot. I lost my balance when the train pulled away, but a human crumple zone buffered my fall. We stayed like that, half fallen. The Diagonal People. | David Mitchell | ||
| 5b12dd8 | Anonymous, faceless homicides, he decides, lack the thrill of human contact. | David Mitchell | ||
| fe32c36 | This druid feeling I get in the woods's so thrilling it makes me want to crap, so I dug a hole with a flat stone inside a clump of mitten-leafed shrubs. I pulled down my cacks and squatted. It's ace shitting outside like a caveman. Let go, thud, subtle crinkle on dry leaves. Squatted craps come out smoother than craps in bogs. Crap's peatier and steamier in open air, too. (My one fear is bluebottles flying up my arsehole and laying eggs in .. | David Mitchell | ||
| 7da0e62 | Beautiful words ruin your poetry. A touch of beauty enhances a dish, but you throw a hill of it inton the pot! No, the palate becomes nauseous. You belief a poem must be beautiful, or it can have no excellence. I am right? Sort of. Your "sort of" is annoying. A yes, or a no, or a qualification please. "Sort of" is an idle loubard, an ignorant vandale. "Sort of" says, "I am ashamed of clarity and precision." So we try again. You belief a p.. | David Mitchell |