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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.

-David Mitchell

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Mother Used To Say

David Mitchell

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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.

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Travel Far Enough, You Meet Yourself.

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 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.

Don't Remember Summer Even Saying Goodbye.

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

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.

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

...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

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 Remain Thankful To God For All His Mercies.

Thankful To God

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.

Folks With Most To Complain About Seldom Complain Most.

- 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.

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

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.

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

Probably" Is A Word With An Emergency Ejector Seat.

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

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.

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

The Song Instantly Insisted It'd Never Existed.

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.

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

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

One's Ribs Shouldn't Be Prison Bars.

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.

False Modesty Can Be Worse Than Arrogance.

The Better Organized The State, The Duller Its Humanity.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Perpetual Encagement Endows Any Mirage Of Salvation With Credibility.

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

End Of The World

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

There Are So Many Cities In Every Single City.

Writing Is Such A Damn Lonely Sickness.

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.

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.

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

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

Wars Do Not Combust Without Warning. They Begin As Little Fires Over The Horizon. Wars Approach. A Wise Man Watches For The Smoke, And Prepares To Vacate The Neighborhood, Just Like Ayrs And Jocasta. My Worry Is That The Next War Will Be So Big, Nowhere With A Decent Restaurant Will Be Left Untouched.

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.

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

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

Implausible Truth Can Serve One Better Than Plausible Fiction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

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

Maybe The Meaning Of Life Lies In Looking For It

Meaning Of Life

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.

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

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.

What Is Any Ocean But A Multitude Of Drops?

Drops In The Ocean

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

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.

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

Time Is The Speed At Which The Past Decays.

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.

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.

Music’s A Wood You Walk Through.

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 Most Malicious God Is The God Of The Counted Chicken.

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

I Think We Think In Terms Of Stories.

Trees're Always A Relief, After People.

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

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

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 Weak Are Meat The Strong Do Eat.

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...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

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

... 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.

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.

…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 Not From A Milieu Where High-register Language Or Philosophical Ideas Were Welcome.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

History Admits No Rules; Only Outcomes.

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.

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

Dreams Are All I Have Ever Truly Owned.

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

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.

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.

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

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

True Knowledge Without Xperience Is Food Without Sustenance

A Life Spent Shaping A World I Want Jackson To Inherit, Not One I Fear Jackson Shall Inherit, This Strikes Me As A Life Worth The Living.

'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?

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

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

One Fine Day A Predatory World Shall Consume Itself.

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.

. . .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.

Lunatics Are Writers Whose Works Write Them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

... 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.

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

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

Men Invented Money Women Invented Mutual Aid

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

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

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.

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.

Truth Is Singular. Its 'versions' Are Mistruths.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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

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

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.

There's A Link Between Bigotry And Bad Spelling.

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

The Human World Is Made Of Stories, Not People.

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.

The Music Provokes A Sharp Longing The Music Soothes.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Do Ants Get Headaches?

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.

Whoever Dies With The Most Stuff Wins.

Who Was Blowing On The Nape Of My Neck?

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

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.

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

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’.

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