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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.

-David Mitchell

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Three Or Four Times

David Mitchell

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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.

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

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I'm Not A Great Deep Political Thinker.

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

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.

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

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

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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.

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 Remain Thankful To God For All His Mercies.

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

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?

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Clocks In Disagreement Are Worse Than No Clock At All.

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

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Do Ants Get Headaches?

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Music’s A Wood You Walk Through.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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Mass Destruction

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

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.

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The Weak Are Meat The Strong Do Eat.

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