Background Image

...

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

-David Mitchell

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Think The Story

David Mitchell

...

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

Views: 14

Topic

More From David Mitchell

Whoever Dies With The Most Stuff Wins.

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

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.

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.

I'm Not A Great Deep Political Thinker.

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

I Think We Think In Terms Of Stories.

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.

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

Mother Used To Say Escape Is Never Further Than The Nearest Book.

Time Is The Speed At Which The Past Decays.

Dead Things Show You What You’ll Be Too One Day.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

If War's First Victim Is Truth, Its Second Is Clerical Efficiency.

Travel Far Enough, You Meet Yourself.

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.

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

The Weak Are Meat The Strong Do Eat.

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

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.

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

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

- 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 True, Reading Too Many Novels Makes You Go Blind.

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

I Remain Thankful To God For All His Mercies.

Thankful To God

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 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.

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

Clocks In Disagreement Are Worse Than No Clock At All.

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

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

The Body Is The Outermost Layer Of The Mind.

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.

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.

Lunatics Are Writers Whose Works Write Them.

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.

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.

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

Writing Is Such A Damn Lonely Sickness.

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

Who Was Blowing On The Nape Of My Neck?

Perhaps All Human Interaction Is About Wanting And Getting.

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.

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.

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.

Probably" Is A Word With An Emergency Ejector Seat.

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.

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

If I Want To Act Relaxed, It's Going To Take All My Cunning, Skill, And Concentration.

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.

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've Become A Less Brave Traveller Since I Became A Dad, But In The Past I Was More Foolhardy Than Brave.

I Can Write Pretty Much Anywhere.

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.

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

Over 85% Of All Statistics Are Made Up On The Spot.

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.

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.

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

Truth Is Singular. Its 'versions' Are Mistruths.

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.

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

How Vulgar, This Hankering After Immortality, How Vain, How False. Composers Are Merely Scribblers Of Cave Paintings. One Writes Music Because Winter Is Eternal And Because, If One Didn't, The Wolves And Blizzards Would Be At One's Throat All The Sooner.

Our Lives Are Not Our Own. We Are Bound To Others, Past And Present, And By Each Crime And Every Kindness, We Birth Our Future.

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?

Men Invented Money Women Invented Mutual Aid

A Life Can Get Knocked Into A New Orbit By A Car Crash, A Lottery Win Or Just A Bleary-eyed Consultant Giving Bad News In A Calm Voice.

Dreams Are All I Have Ever Truly Owned.

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

History Admits No Rules; Only Outcomes.

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

I Added 'writers' To My List Of People Not To Trust. They Make Everything Up.

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

Historically, Unfortunately, Race Seems To Be The Major Division That Humanity Has Imposed On Itself, A Way Of Subdividing Into Smaller Groups.

How Could I Know A Famished Heart Will Eat Its Mind? Can Kill Its Body?

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

Implausible Truth Can Serve One Better Than Plausible Fiction

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

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.

Why Fight The 'natural' (oh, Weaselly Word!) Order Of Things? Why? Because Of This--one Fine Day, A Purely Predatory World Shall Consume Itself. In An Individual, Selfishness Uglifies The Soul; For The Human Species, Selfishness Is Extinction.

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.

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.

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.

The Human World Is Made Of Stories, Not People.

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

What Is Any Ocean But A Multitude Of Drops?

Drops In The Ocean

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.

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.

Creation Never Ceased On The Sixth Evening, It Occurs To The Young Man. Creation Unfolds Around Us, Despite Us And Through Us At The Speed Of Days And Nights. And We Call It Love.

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

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

. . .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.

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.

You Can Maintain Power Over People, As Long As You Give Them Something. Rob A Man Of Everything, And That Man Will No Longer Be In Your Power.

Music’s A Wood You Walk Through.

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.

True Knowledge Without Xperience Is Food Without Sustenance

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

Folks With Most To Complain About Seldom Complain Most.

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.

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.

'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?

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.

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.

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

Foreign Language

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

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

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

Do Ants Get Headaches?

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

Mass Destruction

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

False Modesty Can Be Worse Than Arrogance.

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

One Fine Day A Predatory World Shall Consume Itself.

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.

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

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

Parallel Universe

There's A Link Between Bigotry And Bad Spelling.

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.

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

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

…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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

So Winners, Hae-joo Proposed, Are The Real Losers Because They Learn Nothing? What, Then, Are Losers? Winners?

Don't Remember Summer Even Saying Goodbye.

I Rarely Ever Put My Head Above The Rampart And See Where This Big Lumbering Behemoth Called 'global Literature' Is Going.

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

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

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

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

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.

Hate Eats The Hater The Way Ogres Eat Little Boys.

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.

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

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

The Better Organized The State, The Duller Its Humanity.

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.

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.

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

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

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

To Fool A Judge, Feign Fascination, But To Bamboozle The Whole Court, Feign Boredom.

The Revelation Of Sonmi 451 To Be Is To Be Perceived, And So To Know Thyself Is Only Possible Through The Eyes Of The Other. The Nature Of Our Immortal Lives Is In The Consequences Of Our Words And Deeds, That Go On And Are Pushing Themselves Throughout All Time. - Our Lives Are Not Our Own. From Womb To Tomb, We Are Bound To Others, Past And Present, And By Each Crime And Every Kindness, We Birth Our Future.

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.

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

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

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

I'm A Novelist, That's How I Make My Livelihood, And I Concentrate On The Novels.

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

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

... 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.

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

Japanese Food Makes Me Feel Particularly Good.

I Think It's Natural For Youth To Be Drawn To Newness: The World Is Still New For Them.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Maybe The Meaning Of Life Lies In Looking For It

Meaning Of Life

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

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

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?

Love's Pure Free Joy When It Works, But When It Goes Bad You Pay For The Good Hours At Loan-shark Prices.

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.

She Has To Lose Her Pre-copernican View Of A Universe Revolving Around Herself.

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

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

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

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.

Memories Are Their Own Descendents Masquerading As The Ancestors Of The Present.

I Believe There Is Another World Waiting For Us. A Better World. And I'll Be Waiting For You There.

Trees're Always A Relief, After People.

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

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.

A Half-read Book Is A Half-finished Love Affair.

Any Society's Upper-crust Is Riddled With Immorality, How Else D'you Think They Keep Their Power? Reputation Is King Of The Public Sphere, Not Private. It Is Dethroned By Public Acts.

The Music Provokes A Sharp Longing The Music Soothes.

Autumn Is Leaving Its Mellowness Behind For Its Spiky, Rotted Stage. Don't Remember Summer Even Saying Goodbye.

Perpetual Encagement Endows Any Mirage Of Salvation With Credibility.

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

One's Ribs Shouldn't Be Prison Bars.

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

Trending Author

Francis Ford Coppola

Category