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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.

-David Mitchell

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If We Believe That

David Mitchell

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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.

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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

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

Perhaps All Human Interaction Is About Wanting And Getting.

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

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.

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

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

Men Invented Money Women Invented Mutual Aid

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

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

Parallel Universe

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.

'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?

False Modesty Can Be Worse Than Arrogance.

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

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.

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.

I Think We Think In Terms Of Stories.

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.

…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'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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Don't Remember Summer Even Saying Goodbye.

A Mountain You're Plannin' On Climbin' Ain't The Same As The One You Ain't. It Ain't So Pretty.

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

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.

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.

Implausible Truth Can Serve One Better Than Plausible Fiction

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

Anticipating The End Of The World Is Humanity's Oldest Passtime

End Of The World

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

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

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

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.

Peace, Though Beloved Of Our Lord, Is A Cardinal Virtue Only If Your Neighbors Share Your Conscience.

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

Hate Eats The Hater The Way Ogres Eat Little Boys.

Clocks In Disagreement Are Worse Than No Clock At All.

One Fine Day A Predatory World Shall Consume Itself.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

The Act Of Memory Is An Act Of Ghostwriting.

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

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

Writing Is Such A Damn Lonely Sickness.

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

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

The Body Is The Outermost Layer Of The Mind.

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?

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

What Is Any Ocean But A Multitude Of Drops?

Drops In The Ocean

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

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?

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

The Human World Is Made Of Stories, Not People.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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

...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

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.

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

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.

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

Probably" Is A Word With An Emergency Ejector Seat.

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.

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

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.

... 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.

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

There Are So Many Cities In Every Single City.

Who Was Blowing On The Nape Of My Neck?

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

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.

Travel Far Enough, You Meet Yourself.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

The Song Instantly Insisted It'd Never Existed.

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

Truth Is Singular. Its 'versions' Are Mistruths.

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

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

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

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

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

Do Ants Get Headaches?

The Weak Are Meat The Strong Do Eat.

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

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

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

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

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.

Dreams Are All I Have Ever Truly Owned.

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

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.

I Remain Thankful To God For All His Mercies.

Thankful To God

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

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.

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

- 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.

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.

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?

One's Ribs Shouldn't Be Prison Bars.

Japanese Food Makes Me Feel Particularly Good.

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

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

Do," Said Louisa Finally, "whatever You Can't Not Do.

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

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?

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

Music’s A Wood You Walk Through.

Time Is The Speed At Which The Past Decays.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

The Music Provokes A Sharp Longing The Music Soothes.

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.

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.

Reality Is The Page. Life Is The Word.

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

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.

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.

Perpetual Encagement Endows Any Mirage Of Salvation With Credibility.

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

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

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

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

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

Whoever Dies With The Most Stuff Wins.

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

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.

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

Foreign Language

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

Nothing Is As Eloquent As Nothing.

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

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.

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

True Knowledge Without Xperience Is Food Without Sustenance

... 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.

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

Trees're Always A Relief, After People.

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

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

I Can Write Pretty Much Anywhere.

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

I'm Not A Great Deep Political Thinker.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Maybe The Meaning Of Life Lies In Looking For It

Meaning Of Life

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.

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

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.

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’.

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.

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.

Try This For Deviancy: Fabricants Are Mirrors Held Up To Purebloods' Conscience; What Purebloods See Reflected There Sickens Them. So They Blame You For Holding The Mirror." I Hid My Shock By Asking When Purebloods Might Blame Themselves. Mephi Replied, "history Suggests, Not Until They Are Made To.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

History Admits No Rules; Only Outcomes.

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

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

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

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