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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 6adfe3b | The greats? Well, they all share that quality Napoleon most admired in his generals: luck. Be in Kabul when it falls. Be in Manhattan on 9/11. Be in Paris the night Diana's driver makes his fatal misjudgement." I flinch as the windows blast in, but, no, that's not now, that's ten days ago. "A journalist marries the news, Seymour. She's capricious, cruel, and jealous. She demands you follow her to wherever on Earth life is cheapest, where sh.. | David Mitchell | ||
| 99654cf | Times are you say a person's b'liefs ain't true, they think you're sayin' their lifes ain't true an' their truth ain't true. | David Mitchell | ||
| e136bbf | A true suicide is a paced, disciplined certainty. People pontificate, 'Suicide is Selfishness.' Career churchmen go a step further and call it a cowardly assault on the living...Cowardice has nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. No, what's selfish i to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends and enemies a bit of soul-searching. | David Mitchell | ||
| ca53b74 | The lovelorn, the cry-for-helpers, all mawkish tragedians who give suicide a bad name are the idiots who rush it, like amateur conductors. .A true suicide is a paced, disciplined certainty. People pontificate, 'Suicide is selfishness.' Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call it a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reasons: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's m.. | cowardice existence selfishness suicide | David Mitchell | |
| 000352c | But to what end? Some... future revolution? It can never succeed. As Seneca warned Nero: No matter how many of us you kill, you will never kill your successor. | revolution | David Mitchell | |
| 6c155a6 | The world runs on strangers coping. | David Mitchell | ||
| 11f7aed | As the nineteenth-century philosopher Henry David Thoreau put it, "All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy." | Melanie Mitchell | ||
| d419b29 | The lounge is empty of bodies but full of debris: wineglasses, ashtrays, food wrappers, and a pair of silk boxer shorts over the Boer War rifle | David Mitchell | ||
| f157781 | As Boris Johnson has pointed out, it's now an offence to swear at a police officer. So should you incur a public-spirited 50,000-volt warning shot - perhaps for brandishing your pension book in an aggressive manner or because a young PC has mistaken your tartan shopping trolley for a piece of field artillery - don't accidentally shout "Oh fuck!" or you might get sent to prison." | David Mitchell | ||
| ff8cfbf | facet of existence that only a few hundred in history have glimpsed, but so what? I could hardly tell | David Mitchell | ||
| 5b71c3a | 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. Express gratitude, especially for work that tends to get taken for granted. Identify problems as they arise, remembering that anger is flammable. When you've behaved like a donkey, Peter,' the groom smiles at hi.. | David Mitchell | ||
| d095481 | 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. | David Mitchell | ||
| 6dd39a0 | Nothing exists that cannot be synthesised. | David Mitchell | ||
| 8519a73 | You only value something if you know it'll end. | David Mitchell | ||
| 6cc3882 | Why does any martyr cooperate with his judases? We see an end beyond the endgame. | martyr purpose | David Mitchell | |
| 8e77635 | THE LINES ARE simple enough: "Men have imagined republics and principalities that never really existed at all. 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; for a man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin, since there are so many men who are not good." | David Mitchell | ||
| 67747b7 | The lie that happiness is about borrowing money you haven't got to buy crap you don't need," says Ian. "The lie that we live in a democratic state. And the most weaselly lie of all, that there is no class war." -- | David Mitchell | ||
| c43c5a0 | There's a splish of a fish. I see where it was, but not where it is. | David Mitchell | ||
| b16504e | Is peace of mind the co-workability of your laws? | David Mitchell | ||
| 0bb56ab | Ultimately, wars escalate by eating their own shit, shitting bigger and eating bigger. | David Mitchell | ||
| c58aba7 | I understood that one's environment is a key to one's identity, but that my environment, Papa Song's, was a key I had lost. | David Mitchell | ||
| 40f68a7 | Half-sloshed mums're rolling their eyes at sun-pinked dads burning bangers on barbecues. | David Mitchell | ||
| ec0ebca | What happens to all the seconds tipped into the bin of the past? | David Mitchell | ||
| 2ef79a9 | Esther runs Unalaq's ruby thumbnail up the stem of a purple tulip. "You miss purple, after a few years ..." | David Mitchell | ||
| b7ad819 | Regret' implies a freely chosen, but erroneous, action; free will plays no part in my story. | David Mitchell | ||
| 744c696 | The double-crossed, might-have-been history of my country is not the study of what actually took place here: it's the study of historians' studies. . . . Memories are their own descendants masquerading as the ancestors of the present. | memory place | David Mitchell | |
| 5da5366 | When a man aspires to power, I ask one simple question:"Does he think like a businessman?"' Luisa rolls her napkin into a compact ball. 'I ask tree simple questions. How did he get that power? How is he using it? And how can it be taken off the sonofabitch?" | David Mitchell | ||
| cb5ffda | Men have imagined republics and principalities that never really existed at all. 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; for a man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin, since there are so many men who are not good. | David Mitchell | ||
| 45bac0e | Wars are never cured, they just go into remission for a few years. The End is what we want, so I'm afraid the End is what we're damn well going to get. | David Mitchell | ||
| a3a479c | Her zaman baska bir savas cikar, Robert. Kokleri hicbir zaman tamamen kazinmaz. Savaslari ne alevlendirir? Guc arzusu, insan dogasinin belkemigi. Siddet tehdidi, siddet korkusu ya da siddetin kendisi bu dehset verici arzunun aracidir. Guc arzusunu yatak odalarinda, mutfaklarda, fabrikalarda, sendikalarda ve devletlerin sinirlarinda gorebilirsin. Bunu iyi dinle ve aklina yaz. Ulus-devlet insan dogasinin sisirilip devasa boyutlara getirilmis .. | cloud-atlas david-mitchell human-nature qoutes wars | David Mitchell | |
| 181dc21 | Bunlardan nasil bir ahlak dersi cikarmali? Baris, Rabbimiz tarafindan ne kadar sevilse de, ancak komsulariniz da sizin gibi vicdanliysa esas erdemlerden biri sayilir. | cloud-atlas david-mitchell human-nature quotes | David Mitchell | |
| 3b44d9f | Some magic is normality you're not yet used to. | David Mitchell | ||
| 5c781ac | It is a gift from your ancestors and a loan from your descendants. | David Mitchell | ||
| 9a332c4 | I rarely feel despair, I forget how it gouges. | David Mitchell | ||
| cbd34c2 | Only I don't close my eyes these days, because it hurts too much when I open them. | David Mitchell | ||
| 3fb1ac0 | One cannot cross the same river twice. | David Mitchell | ||
| 681985f | I wonder if "Anchorite" means "anchorman," or if it's a Kiwi-ism or a rifle club-ism. Cambridge is full of insiders' words to keep outsiders out." | David Mitchell | ||
| 09da0ad | I wince. From the Bank of Floorboards I withdraw my assets and redeposit the wedge of banknotes in my passport bag. This I secure inside my ski jacket, contemplating that, while the wealthy are no more likely to be born stupid than the poor, a wealthy upbringing compounds stupidity while a hardscrabble childhood dilutes it, if only for Darwinian reasons. This is why the elite need a prophylactic barrier of shitty state schools, to prevent c.. | David Mitchell | ||
| 406873e | When I'm in doubt - as I am now - I ask myself, 'What would Carl Jung do?' - and act accordingly. | psychology | David Mitchell | |
| 68ea67a | E un ciclo antico come il tribalismo. In principio, c'e l'ignoranza. L'ignoranza genera paura. La paura genera odio, e l'odio genera violenza. La violenza crea altra violenza, finche l'unica legge diventa cio che viene stabilito dal piu forte. | David Mitchell | ||
| 0c33d63 | My right foot hits the ground first, but my left one's gone AWOL, and I'm cartwheeling, my body mapped by local explosions of pain -- ankle, knee, elbow -- shit, my left ski's gone, whipped off, vamoosed -- ground-woods-sky, ground-woods-sky ground-woods-sky, a faceful of gravelly snow; dice in a tumbler; apples in a tumble dryer, a grunt, a groan, a plea, a shiiiiiiiiit ... [ ... ] Gravity, velocity, and the ground; stopping is going to c.. | skiing | David Mitchell | |
| 8c6c1f5 | the Rottnest Light is a stumpy middle finger sticking up from the a rocky rise, grunting, "Sit on this, mate." | lighthouses rottnest-light | David Mitchell | |
| 6095a86 | I'm not in the Scouts any more,' I remind her. Mr Moody our scoutmaster told me to get lost, so I did, and it took the Snowdonia mountain rescue service two days to find my shelter. I'd been on the local news and everything. Everyone was angry, but I was only following orders. | David Mitchell | ||
| 6c62815 | While much of her true name lay beyond my knowledge of the Noongar language, as the minutes passed I understood that her name was also a history of her people, a sort of Bayeux Tapestry that bound myth with loves, births, deaths; hunts, battles, journeys; droughts, fires, storms; and names of every host within whose body Moombaki had sojourned. | noongar | David Mitchell |