David Mitchell (author) quotes - page 2

What is "poker"? A card game where abler liars take money off less able liars. (David Mitchell (author))
Human hunger birthed the Civlize, but human hunger killed it too. View quote
David Mitchell (author)
To fool a judge, feign fascination, but to bamboozle the whole court, feign boredom. View quote
David Mitchell (author)
I think words operate like musical notes that the eyeball hears. View quote
David Mitchell (author)
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. View quote
David Mitchell (author)
Under the Enrichment Laws, consumers have to spend a fixed quota of dollars each month, depending on their strata. Hoarding is an anti-corpocratic crime. View quote
David Mitchell (author)
For me, novels coalesce into being, rather than arrive fully formed. View quote
David Mitchell (author)
Books don't offer real escape but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw. View quote
David Mitchell (author)
Science devises ever bloodier means of war until humanity's powers of destruction overcome our powers of creation and our civilisation drives itself to extinction. View quote
David Mitchell (author)
Perhaps the best answer is that the writer that I am has been shaped by the stammering kid that I was, and that although my stammer didn't make me write, it did, in part, inform and influence the writer I became. It's true that stammerers can become more adept at sentence construction. Synonyms aren't always neatly interchangeable. Sometimes choosing word B over word A requires you to construct a different sentence to house it-and quickly, too, before your listener smells the stammering rat. View quote
David Mitchell (author)
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. (David Mitchell (author))
Your version of the truth is the only one that matters." "Truth is singular. Its 'versions' are mistruths. View quote
David Mitchell (author)
Diplomacy... mops up war's spillages; legitimizes its outcomes; gives the strong state the means to impose its will on a weaker one, while saving its fleets and battalions for weightier opponents. View quote
David Mitchell (author)
As many truths as men. Ocassionally, I glimpse a truer Truth, hiding in imperfect simulacrums of itself, but as I approach, it bestirs itself & moves deeper into the thorny swamp of dissent. View quote
David Mitchell (author)
Boundaries between noise and sound are conventions, I see now. All boundaries are conventions, national ones too. One may transcend any convention, if only one can first conceive of doing so. View quote
David Mitchell (author)
Fantasy. Lunacy. All revolutions are, until they happen, then they are historical inevitabilities. View quote
David Mitchell (author)
Ghostwritten's secret agenda is to offer up eight different answers to the question, "Why do things happen?" so it has the right to monkey about with time and history. number9dreams's secret agenda is to offer eight different answers to the question, "In what space does the mind operate?" View quote
David Mitchell (author)
Right now I'm working on a book set in the thirty years on either side of 2010, but I shouldn't give too many details or the next thing you know it's on Wikipedia and if I change my mind and decide to recast King Lear in a pond of frogs and toads I'll just give a hardworking Wikipedian an extra headache. View quote
David Mitchell (author)
"But it's been done a hundred times before!" -- As if there could be anything not done a hundred thousand times between Aristophanes and Andrew Void Webber! As if Art is the What, not the How! View quote
David Mitchell (author)
Whoever said money can't buy you happiness... obviously didn't have enough of the stuff. (cf. "Letters from Zedelghem", p. 78. View quote
David Mitchell (author)
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. (David Mitchell (author))
List'n, savages an Civ'lizeds ain't divvied by tribes or b'liefs or mountain ranges, nay, ev'ry human is both, yay. View quote
David Mitchell (author)
I became a scientist because... it's like panning for gold in a muddy torrent. Truth is the gold. View quote
David Mitchell (author)
And if you threaten my reputation, oh well, I'll have to ruin yours! View quote
David Mitchell (author)
'Y' is about the weakest letter of all. 'Y' can't make up its mind if it's a vowel or a consonant, can it? View quote
David Mitchell (author)