Background Image

...

I Elbowed My Way Into The Grubby Café, Bought A Pie That Tasted Of Shoe Polish And A Pot Of Tea With Cork Crumbs Floating In It, And Eavesdropped On A Pair Of Shetland Pony Breeders. Despondency Makes One Hanker After Lives One Never Led. Why Have You Given Your Life To Books, Tc? Dull, Dull, Dull! The Memoirs Are Bad Enough, But All That Ruddy Fiction! Hero Goes On A Journey, Stranger Comes To Town, Somebody Wants Something, They Get It Or They Don't, Will Is Pitted Against Will. "admire Me, For I Am A Metaphor.

-David Mitchell

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Elbowed My Way

David Mitchell

...

I Elbowed My Way Into The Grubby Café, Bought A Pie That Tasted Of Shoe Polish And A Pot Of Tea With Cork Crumbs Floating In It, And Eavesdropped On A Pair Of Shetland Pony Breeders. Despondency Makes One Hanker After Lives One Never Led. Why Have You Given Your Life To Books, Tc? Dull, Dull, Dull! The Memoirs Are Bad Enough, But All That Ruddy Fiction! Hero Goes On A Journey, Stranger Comes To Town, Somebody Wants Something, They Get It Or They Don't, Will Is Pitted Against Will. "admire Me, For I Am A Metaphor.

Views: 5

Topic

More From David Mitchell

Act', Implores The Ghost Of Future Regret. 'i Shan't Give You Another Chance'. [and So Jacob Does] 'damned Fool,' Groans The Demon Of Present Regret. 'what Have You Done?

Hate Eats The Hater The Way Ogres Eat Little Boys.

Always, It Is The Poor People Who Pay. And Always, It Is The Poor People's Women Who Pay The Most.

Truth Is Singular. Its 'versions' Are Mistruths.

Teachers're Always Using That "in Your Own Words." I Hate That. Authors Knit Their Sentences Tight. It's Their Job. Why Make Us Unpick Them, Just To Put It Back Together More Shonkily? How're You S'posed To Say Kapellmeister If You Can't Say Kapellmeister?

Sometimes The Fluffy Bunny Of Incredulity Zooms Around The Bend So Rapidly That The Greyhound Of Language Is Left, Agog, In The Starting Cage.

Writing Is Probably One-fifth Coming Up With The Stuff, And Four-fifths Self-editing Again And Again And Again.

I Lost My Balance When The Train Pulled Away, But A Human Crumple Zone Buffered My Fall. We Stayed Like That, Half Fallen. Diagonal People.

I Can't Bear Living In This Huge Beautiful World And Not Try To Imitate It As Best I Can.

Trees're Always A Relief, After People.

Write Something Every Single Day, Even If It's Just Three Lines. And It Doesn't Matter If It's Any Good - Just Write Something Every Day.

Power. What Do We Mean? 'the Ability To Determine Another Man's Luck.' ...how Is It That Some Men Attain Mastery Over Others While The Vast Majority Live And Die As Minions, As Livestock? The Answer Is A Holy Trinity. First: God-given Gifts Of Charisma. Second: The Discipline To Nurture These Gifts To Maturity, For Though Humanity's Topsoil Is Fertile With Talent, Only One Seed In Ten Thousand Will Ever Flower -- For Want Of Discipline. Third: The Will To Power.

Why Ask A Question Whose Answer Would Demand Ten More Questions?

Why Human Beings Despise What Is Beautiful And Good, And Seek To Destroy The Things They Need The Most

I Hear My Father-in-law's Response..."naïve, Dreaming Adam. He Who Would Do Battle With The Many-headed Hydra Of Human Nature Must Pay A World Of Pain & His Family Must Pay It Along With Him! & Only As You Gasp Your Dying Breath Shall You Understand, Your Life Amounted To No More Than One Drop In A Limitless Ocean!" Yet What Is Any Ocean But A Multitude Of Drops?

My Life Amounts To No More Than One Drop In A Limitless Ocean. Yet What Is Any Ocean, But A Multitude Of Drops?

Men Invented Money Women Invented Mutual Aid

Freedom!- Is The Fatuous Jingle Of Our Civilization, But Only Those Deprived Of It Have The Barest Inkling Re: What The Stuff Actually Is.

Wars Are Never Cured, They Just Go Into Remission For A Few Years.

Secrets Affect You More Than You’d Think. You Lie To Keep Them Hidden. You Steer Talk Away From Them. You Worry Someone’ll Discover Yours And Tell The World. You Think You Are In Charge Of The Secret, But Isn’t It The Secret Who’s Actually Using You?

Your Turn Has Come To Sift Through The Dreck Of Humanity For Rare Specks Of Originality

... 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.

History Admits No Rules; Only Outcomes.

This World, He Thinks, Contains Just One Masterpiece, And That Is Itself.

. . .my Dreams Are The Single Unpredictable Factor In My Zoned Days And Nights. Nobody Allots Them, Or Censors Them. Dreams Are All I Have Ever Truly Owned.

The Weak Are Meat The Strong Do Eat.

I’m Scared Of The Future. I’m Scared Of The Past. I’m Nervous At The Moment.

Torturous Advances Won Over Generations Can Be Lost By A Single Stroke Of A Myopic President's Pen Or A Vainglorious General's Sword.

All Revolutions Are The Sheerest Fantasy Until They Happen; Then They Become Historical Inevitabilities.

These Jokes The World Plays, They're Not Funny At All.

Women, O, Women! They'll Find The Baddest Meanin' In Your Words & Hold It Up.

In The 1970s And 1980s There Was So Little Decent Fiction For Young People, But We're Now In A Golden Age That Shows No Sign Of Fading. Philip Pullman, J. K. Rowling, Lemony Snicket Are Only Three Of The Best Known Among A Good Number Of Equals.

If You Show Someone Something You've Written, You Give Them A Sharpened Stake, Lie Down In Your Coffin, And Say, ‘when You’re Ready’.

Taro Taught Me That People Respect Spirit, But Even Cowards Don't Respect Cowards.

I Got A Rejection Letter From An Editor At Harpercollins, Who Included A Report From His Professional Reader. This Report Shredded My First-born Novel, Laughed At My Phrasing, Twirled My Lacy Pretensions Around And Gobbed Into The Seething Mosh Pit Of My Stolen Clichés. As I Read The Report, The World Became Very Quiet And Stopped Rotating. What Poisoned Me Was The Fact That The Report's Criticisms Were All Absolutely True. The Sound Of My Landlady Digging In The Garden Got The World Moving Again. I Slipped The Letter Into The Trash... Knowing I'd Remember Every Word.

The Body Is The Outermost Layer Of The Mind.

Travel Far Enough, You Meet Yourself.

The Mind Has A Mind Of Its Own. It Shows Us Pictures. Pictures Of The Past And The Might-one-day-be. This Mind's Mind Exerts Its Own Will, Too, And Has Its Own Voice.

The Spirit Was Willing But The Flesh Was Weak.

What Wouldn't I Give Now For A Never-changing Map Of The Ever-constant Ineffable? To Possess, As It Were, An Atlas Of Clouds.

I'm From A Time And Place Where Bigheadedness Was A Really Savage Crime, And You'd Get Cut Down For It By Your Peers And Parents.

Dreams Are All I Have Ever Truly Owned.

Little Girls Are Like Old Cats. If They Don't Like You Nothing On Earth Will Make Them Pretend To.

Strip Back The Beliefs Pasted On By Governesses, Schools, And States, You Find Indelible Truths At One's Core.

I Am Going To Tell You A Secret. Everything Is About Wanting. Everything. Things Happen Because Of People Wanting. Watch Closely, And You’ll See What I Mean.

People Are Obscenities. Would Rather Be Music Than Be A Mass Of Tubes Squeezing Semisolids Around Itself For A Few Decades Before Becoming So Dribblesome It'll No Longer Function.

If Swans Weren't Real Myths'd Make Up.

How Lazily "xperts" Dismiss What They Fail To Understand!

It's True That Stammerers Can Become More Adept At Sentence Construction.

I...asked Why Purebloods Despised Me So. He Replied, 'what If The Difference Between Social Strata Stem Not From Genomics Or Inherent Xcellence Or Even Dollars, But Merely Differences In Knowledge? Would This Not Mean The Whole Pyramid Is Built On Shifting Sands?... Fabricants Are Mirrors Held Up To Purebloods' Consciences; What Purebloods See Reflected There Sickens Them. So They Blame You For Holding Up The Mirror

Faith, The Least Exclusive Club On Earth, Has The Craftiest Doorman. Every Time I've Stepped Through Its Wide-open Doorway, I Find Myself Stepping Out On The Street Again.

Clocks In Disagreement Are Worse Than No Clock At All.

Words Are What You Fight With But What You Fight About Is Whether Or Not You're Afraid Of Them.

But You Have Read Madame Bovary?' (i'd Never Heard Of Her Books.) 'no.

There's A Link Between Bigotry And Bad Spelling.

Time Is What Stops History Happening At Once; Time Is The Speed At Which The Past Disappears.

The Earth's A Door If You Press Your Ear Against It.

True Knowledge Without Xperience Is Food Without Sustenance

Don't Remember Summer Even Saying Goodbye.

I'm Not A Great Deep Political Thinker.

The Human World Is Made Of Stories, Not People. The People The Stories Use To Tell Themselves Are Not To Be Blamed

Faith Shall Save Your Soul From Death. Without Faith, Death Is A Drowning, The End Of Ends, And What Sane Man Wouldn't Fear That? But With Faith, Death Is Nothing Worse Than The End Of The Voyage We Call Life, And The Beginning Of An Eternal Voyage In A Company Of Our Loved Ones, With Griefs And Woes Smoothed Out, And Under The Capacity Of Our Creator.

When Insolvent, Pack Minimally, With A Valise Tough Enough To Be Thrown Onto A London Pavement From A First- Or Second-floor Window. Insist On Hotel Rooms No Higher.

Ive Never Had Cocaine. I Work In Showbusiness And No One Has Ever Offered Me Cocaine. Can You Believe That? It Makes Me Worry Im Not Always The Life And Soul Of The Party That I Feel Like In My Head.

Sometimes, Comics Will Make The Observation That It's Not Jokes That Are Funny, It's Characters That Are Funny. And Isn't That True! That's Why I Always Kill Jokes. I'm Terrible At Them, Because I Get The Joke Right, But I Can't Get The Character Right, And It Just Goes Down Like A Lead Balloon.

False Modesty Can Be Worse Than Arrogance.

As Many Truths As Men. Occasionally, 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.

Many Children Are Natural Fantasists, I Think, Perhaps Because Their Imaginations Have Yet To Be Clobbered Into Submission By Experience.

Who Was Blowing On The Nape Of My Neck?

The Uncreated And The Dead Exist Solely In Our Actual And Virtual Pasts.

Human Beings Need To Watch Out For Reasonless Niceness Too. It's Never Reasonless And Its Reason's Not Usually Nice.

I Recently Bought A Cat, But Took It Back A Day Later Because Our Personalities Clashed.

For White Men, To Live Is To Own, Or To Try To Own More, Or To Die Trying To Own More. Their Appetites Are Astonishing! They Own Wardrobes, Slaves, Carriages, Houses, Warehouses, And Ships. They Own Ports, Cities, Plantations, Valleys, Mountains, Chains Of Islands. They Own This World, Its Jungles, Its Skies, And Its Seas. Yet They Complain That Dejima Is A Prison. They Complain They Are Not Free.

If Your Words're True, They're Armed.

If, By Happiness, You Mean The Absence Of Adversity I And All Fabricants Are The Happiest Stratum In Corpocracy As Genomicists Insist. However, If Happiness Means The Conquest Of Adversity Or A Sense Of Purpose, Or The Xercise Of One’s Will To Power, Then Of All Nea So Copros’s Slaves We Surely Are The Most Miserable.

Dreams Are Shores Where The Ocean Of Spirit Meets The Land Of Matter. Dreams Are Beaches Where The Yet-to-be, The Once-were, The Will-never-be May Walk Awhile With The Still-are.

I Think Words Operate Like Musical Notes That The Eyeball Hears.

To Enslave An Individual Troubles Your Consciences, Archivist, But To Enslave A Clone Is No More Troubling Than Owning The Latest Six-wheeler Ford, Ethically. Because You Cannot Discern Our Differences, You Assume We Have None. But Make No Mistake: Even Same-stem Fabricants Cultured In The Same Wombtank Are As Singular As Snowflakes.

I Still Haven't Quite Got Used To Eating Live Fish.

...now I'm A Spent Firework; But At Least I've Been A Firework.

Often I Think Boys Don’t Become Men. Boys Just Get Papier-mâchéd Inside A Man’s Mask. Sometimes You Can Tell The Boy Is Still In There.

I Feel Like Something Important Has Happened To Me. Is This Possible?

Yay, Old'uns' Smart Mastered Sicks, Miles, Seeds An' Made Miracles Ord'nary, But It Din't Master One Thing, Nay, A Hunger In The Hearts O' Humans, Yay, A Hunger For More.

I Wonder If You Encountered This Dictum First Spoken By A Twentieth-century Statesman: "an Abyss Cannot Be Crossed In Two Steps.

Loneliness Is An Integral Part Of Travelling. I Used To Think It Was The Downside To Travelling, But Now I Realise It Is A Necessary Educative Part Of It To Be Embraced.

Me, I Want To Bloody Kick This Moronic Bloody World In The Bloody Teeth Over And Over Till It Bloody Understands That Not Hurting People Is Ten Bloody Thousand Times More Bloody Important Than Being Right.

It's True, Reading Too Many Novels Makes You Go Blind.

We Looked At Each Other For The Last Time; Nothing Is As Eloquent As Nothing.

Nothing Is As Eloquent As Nothing.

An Idler And A Sluggard Are As Different As A Gourmand And A Glutton.

...it’s Not Just The Person Who Fills A House, It’s Their I’ll Be Back Later!s, Their Toothbrushes And Unused Hats And Coats, Their Belongingnesses.

Missing Someone

What Is Any Ocean But A Multitude Of Drops?

Drops In The Ocean

... 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.

Assured Her I've Never Loved Anyone Except Myself And Have No Intention Of Starting Now.

If Only,’ Shiroyama Dreams, ‘human Beings Were Not Masks Behind Masks Behind Masks. If Only This World Was A Clean Board Of Lines And Intersections. If Only Time Was A Sequence Of Considered Moves And Not A Chaos Of Slippages And Blunders.

The Act Of Memory Is An Act Of Ghostwriting.

Right, My Phone. When These Things First Appeared, They Were So Cool. Only When It Was Too Late Did People Realize They Are As Cool As Electronic Tags On Remand Prisoners.

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.

I Have Always Preferred Maps To Books. They Don't Answer You Back.

People Pontificate, "suicide Is Selfishness." Career Churchmen Like Pater Go A Step Further And Call In A Cowardly Assault On The Living. Oafs Argue This Specious Line For Varying Reason: To Evade Fingers Of Blame, To Impress One's Audience With One's Mental Fiber, To Vent Anger, Or Just Because One Lacks The Necessary Suffering To Sympathize. Cowardice Is Nothing To Do With It - Suicide Takes Considerable Courage. Japanese Have The Right Idea. No, What's Selfish Is To Demand Another To Endure An Intolerable Existence, Just To Spare Families, Friends, And Enemies A Bit Of Soul-searching.

Two People Who Are A Little Bit Deluded In Each Other's Favour. That's What Love Is, Isn't It?

If You’re In Your Life, Chance. Viewed From The Outside, Like A Book You’re Reading, It’s Fate All The Way.

Any Adaptation Is A Translation, And There Is Such A Thing As An Unreadably Faithful Translation; And I Believe A Degree Of Reinterpretatio N For The New Language May Be Not Only Inevitable But Desirable.

Books Don't Offer Real Escape, But They Can Stop A Mind Scratching Itself Raw.

If We Believe That Humanity May Transcend Tooth And Claw, If We Believe Divers Races & Creeds Can Share This World As Peaceably As The Orphans Share Their Candlenut Tree, If We Believe Leaders Must Be Just, Violence Muzzled, Power Accountable & The Riches Of The Earth & Its Oceans Shared Equitably, Such A World Will Come To Pass.

…and There, In The Background, The Sky’s Sediment Had Sunk To A Place Where All The Woe Of The Words ‘i Am’ Dissolved Into Blue Peace. He Said It. ‘the Ocean.

I Often Lose Myself In The Sudoku-like Challenges Of Making A Book Work.

Have You Noticed," Said John, "how Countries Call Theirs 'sovereign Nuclear Deterrents,' But Call The Other Countries' Ones 'weapons Of Mass Destruction'?

Mass Destruction

Do Ants Get Headaches?

Spent The Fortnight Gone In The Music Room Reworking My Year's Fragments Into A 'sextet For Overlapping Soloists': Piano, Clarinet, 'cello, Flute, Oboe, And Violin, Each In Its Own Language Of Key, Scale, And Color. In The First Set, Each Solo Is Interrupted By Its Successor; In The Second, Each Interruption Is Recontinued, In Order. Revolutionary Or Gimmicky? Shan't Know Until It's Finished, And By Then It'll Be Too Late.

Reality Is The Page. Life Is The Word.

Once Any Tyranny Becomes Accepted As Ordinary, Its Victory Is Assured.

War's An Auction Where Whoever Can Pay The Most In Damage And Still Be Standing Wins.

The Music Provokes A Sharp Longing The Music Soothes.

What Do I Miss? Second-hand Bookshops Where I Can Find Things I Had No Idea I Wanted. Abebooks Helps, But It Doesn't Have That Smell.

Time Is The Speed At Which The Past Decays.

Probably In A Parallel Universe Not Far From Here, I'm Working For Nintendo.

Parallel Universe

As Long As Our Civilisation Keeps Trundling Along Generally Forwards, Then There Is The Possibility Of A Future Where Ethnicity Is Merely An Interesting Badge, Not A Uniform You Can't Take Off.

In An Individual, Selfishness Uglifies The Soul; For The Human Species, Selfishness Is Extinction.

Oh, Diplomacy ... It 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.

I Can Write Pretty Much Anywhere.

The World Never Stops Unmaking What The World Never Stops Making. But Who Says The World Has To Make Sense?

As For Reading, I Wish I Had A Magic Door To A Library Where I Could Go In, Read For Days And Days, And Come Back In The Same Minute I Left. I'm Still Looking For The Door.

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.

A Novelist Needs To Know His Own Strong Points And Weak Points.

The Better Organized The State, The Duller Its Humanity.

This Isn’t Lust. Lust Wants, Does The Obvious Love Is Greedier. Love Wants Round-the-clock Care; Protection; Rings, Vows, Joint Accounts; Scented Candles On Birthdays; Life Insurance. Babies. Love’s A Dictator.

So Little Is Actually Worthy Of Belief Or Disbelief. Better To Strive To Coexist Than Seek To Disapprove . . .

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.

The Most Malicious God Is The God Of The Counted Chicken.

If Losers Can Exploit What Their Adversaries Teach Them, Yes, Losers Can Become Winners In The Long Term.

I Love Hbo Productions, Actually, Like 'the Wire.'

Italians Give Their City Sexes, And They All Agree That The Sex For A Particular City Is Quite Correct, But None Of Them Can Explain Why. I Love That. London's Middle-aged And Male, Respectably Married But Secretly Gay.

What Sparks Wars? The Will To Power, The Backbone Of Human Nature. The Threat Of Violence, The Fear Of Violence, Or Actual Violence, Is The Instrument Of This Dreadful Will. You Can See The Will To Power In Bedrooms, Kitchens, Factories, Unions And The Borders Of States. Listen To This And Remember It. The Nation State Is Merely Human Nature Inflated To Monstrous Proportions. Qed, Nations Are Entities Whose Laws Are Written By Violence. Thus It Ever Was, So Ever Shall It Be.

I Think The Story Is The Most Ancient Form Of Human Entertainment.

Good Moods’re As Fragile As Eggs...bad Moods’re As Fragile As Bricks.

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.

Human Hunger Birthed The Civlize, But Human Hunger Killed It Too.

Music’s A Wood You Walk Through.

Japanese Food Makes Me Feel Particularly Good.

Go To Hell, Willy, Our Souls Eat Poetry, But One Has Seven Deadly Sins To Feed!

Mother Used To Say Escape Is Never Further Than The Nearest Book. Well, Mumsy, No, Not Really. Your Beloved Large-print Sagas Of Rags, Riches, And Heartbreak Were No Camouflage Against The Miseries Trained On You By The Tennis Ball Launcher Of Life, Were They? But, Yes, Mum, There Again, You Have A Point. Books Don’t Offer Real Escape, But They Can Stop A Mind Scratching Itself Raw.

Pain Is Strong, Aye - But Friends' Eyes, More Strong." I Told Him That He Knows Next To Nothing About Me & I Know Nothing About Him. He Jabbed At His Eyes & Jabbed At Mine, As If That Single Gesture Were Ample Explanation.

Probably" Is A Word With An Emergency Ejector Seat.

One Cannot Pass By Without Thinking Of The Density Of Men In The Ground.

By Each Crime And Every Kindness, We Birth Our Future.

It'll Be All Right." Julia's Gentleness Makes It Worse. "in The End, Jace." "it Doesn't Feel Very All Right." "that's Because It's Not The End.

Maybe Then You Comprehend, Speaking One Language Only Is A Prison!

Foreign Language

Whoever Dies With The Most Stuff Wins.

The Soul Is A Verb." He Impales A Lit Candle On A Spike. "not A Noun.

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.

Power, Time, Gravity, Love. The Forces That Really Kick Ass Are All Invisible.

The Her That Lived In Her Looked Out Through Her Eyes, Through My Eyes, And At The Me That Lives In Me.

Through My Eyes

When I Think About It, I'm Happily Bewildered That People Will Preorder My Books They'll Preorder Me. What A Lucky Guy!

The Healthy Can't Understand The Emptied, The Broken.

The Mind Abhors A Vacancy & Is Wont To People It With Phantoms.

War May Be An Auction For Countries. For Soldiers It's A Lottery.

People B'lief The World Is Built So An Tellin Em It Ain't So Caves The Roofs On Their Heads'n'maybe Yours.

Lying's Wrong, But When The World Spins Backwards, A Small Wrong May Be A Big Right.

I Understand Now That Boundaries Between Noise And Sound Are Conventions. All Boundaries Are Conventions, Waiting To Be Transcended. One May Transcend Any Convention If Only One Can First Conceive Of Doing So.

A Weapon Men Use Against Women Is The Refusal To Take Them Seriously.

Beyond The Indian Hamlet, Upon A Forlorn Strand, I Happened On A Trail Of Recent Footprints.

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.

One Fine Day A Predatory World Shall Consume Itself.

The Truth Of A Myth...is Not In Its Words But Its Patterns.

Whoever Opined "money Can't Buy You Happiness" Obviously Had Far Too Much Of The Stuff.

- This Isn't An Interrogation Or A Trail. Your Version Of The Truth Is The Only Thing That Matters. -truth Is Singular. It's 'versions' Are Mistruths.

It's A Small World. It Keeps Recrossing Itself.

For Me, Novels Coalesce Into Being, Rather Than Arrive Fully Formed.

The Best Way To Get Out Of Debt Is Not To Seek To Get Out Of Debt, But To Seek To Create Wealth

Strip Back The Beliefs Pasted On By Governesses, Schools, And States, You Find Indelible Truths At One's Core. Rome'll Decline And Fall Again, Cortés'll Lay Tenochtitlán To Waste Again, And Later, Ewing Will Sail Again, Adrian'll Be Blown To Pieces Again, You And I'll Sleep Under The Corsican Stars Again, I'll Come To Bruges Again, Fall In And Out Of Love With Eva Again, You'll Read This Letter Again, The Sun'll Grow Cold Again. Nietzsche's Gramophone Record. When It Ends, The Old One Plays It Again, For An Eternity Of Eternities.

A Book You Finish Reading Is Not The Same Book It Was Before You Read It.

Only Professional Diplomats, Inveterate Idiots And Women View Diplomacy As A Long-term Substitute For War.

I Am, Emphatically. Mental Illness Triggered By Xperimental Error.

We Are Only What We Know, And I Wished To Be So Much More Than I Was, Sorely.

I'm Not From A Milieu Where High-register Language Or Philosophical Ideas Were Welcome.

The Human World Is Made Of Stories, Not People.

As An Experienced Editor, I Disapprove Of Flashbacks, Foreshadowings, And Tricksy Devices; They Belong In The 1980s With M.a.s In Postmodernism And Chaos Theory.

Eva. Every Day I've Climbed Up The Belfry Chanting A Lucky Chant At One Syllable Per Beat, "to-day-to-day-let-her-be-here-to-day-to-day.

We Are Both Busy People, So Let's Cut The Small Talk.

Better A Soulless Clone... Than A Souled Roach.

I Think All Writers Of My Age Who Are Brought Up On Films Probably By The Age Of 16 Have Seen Many More Films Than They Have Read Classics Of Literature. We Can't Help But Be Influenced By Film. Film Has Got Some Great Tricks That It's Taught Writers.

Implausible Truth Can Serve One Better Than Plausible Fiction

Leaves Turned To Soil Beneath My Feet. Thus It Is, Trees Eat Themselves.

The Learnin' Mind Is The Livin' Mind, Meronym Said, An Any Sort O'smart Is Truesome Smart, Old Smart Or New High Smart Or Low.

Folks With Most To Complain About Seldom Complain Most.

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. Who Can Say Where The Cloud's Blowed From Or Who The Soul'll Be 'morrow? Only Sonmi The East An' The West An' The Compass An' The Atlas, Yay, Only The Atlas O' Clouds.

I Pass Through Many Me's In The Course Of My Day, Each One Selfish With His Time. The Lying-in-bed Me And The Enjoying-the-hot-shower Me Are Particularly Selfish. The Late Me Loathes The Pair Of Them.

Why Does Any Martyr Cooperate With His Judases?...we See A Game Beyond The Endgame...as Seneca Warned Nero: No Matter How Many Of Us You Kill, You Will Never Kill Your Successor.

I Believe Death Is Only A Door. One Closes, And Another Opens. If I Were To Imagine Heaven, I Would Imagine A Door Opening. And He Would Be Waiting For Me There.

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.

But No, We Cross, Crisscross, And Recross Our Old Tracks Like Figure Skaters.

Three Or Four Times Only In My Youth Did I Glimpse The Joyous Isles, Before They Were Lost To Fogs, Depressions, Cold Fronts, Ill Winds, And Contrary Tides... I Mistook Them For Adulthood. Assuming They Were A Fixed Feature In My Life's Voyage, I Neglected To Record Their Latitude, Their Longitude, Their Approach. Young Ruddy Fool. What Wouldn't I Give Now For A Never-changing Map Of The Ever-constant Ineffable? To Possess, As It Were, An Atlas Of Clouds.

Perpetual Encagement Endows Any Mirage Of Salvation With Credibility.

You Say You're 'depressed' - All I See Is Resilience. You Are Allowed To Feel Messed Up And Inside Out. It Doesn't Mean You're Defective - It Just Means You're Human.

Faith, The Least Exclusive Club On Earth, Has The Craftiest Doorman.

The Rain's Innumerable Hooves Spatter On The Streets And Roofs.

Don't Bemoan Your Misspent Life Quite Yet. Forgive Me For Flaunting My Experience, But You Have No Conception Of What A Misspent Life Constitutes.

What Is "poker"? A Card Game Where Abler Liars Take Money Off Less Able Liars.

I Really Wish They Hadn't Made The Set Out Of Asbestos.

Trending Author

Category