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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.

-David Mitchell

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What Sparks Wars? The

David Mitchell

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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.

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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.

Writing Is Such A Damn Lonely Sickness.

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.

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

There Are So Many Cities In Every Single City.

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. The People The Stories Use To Tell Themselves Are Not To Be Blamed

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

The Human World Is Made Of Stories, Not People.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Who Was Blowing On The Nape Of My Neck?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Perhaps All Human Interaction Is About Wanting And Getting.

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

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

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

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

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

There's A Link Between Bigotry And Bad Spelling.

... 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.

Clocks In Disagreement Are Worse Than No Clock At All.

Music’s A Wood You Walk Through.

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

I Can Write Pretty Much Anywhere.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Hate Eats The Hater The Way Ogres Eat Little Boys.

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.

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.

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.

Perpetual Encagement Endows Any Mirage Of Salvation With Credibility.

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.

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.

What Is Any Ocean But A Multitude Of Drops?

Drops In The Ocean

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.

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.

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.

'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?

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Parallel Universe

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

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

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

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

Men Invented Money Women Invented Mutual Aid

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

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

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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.

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

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

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

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

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Don't Remember Summer Even Saying Goodbye.

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

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

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Missing Someone

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.

... 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.

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.

I'm Not A Great Deep Political Thinker.

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 Think We Think In Terms Of Stories.

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

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

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

Whoever Dies With The Most Stuff Wins.

Travel Far Enough, You Meet Yourself.

The Act Of Memory Is An Act Of Ghostwriting.

The Music Provokes A Sharp Longing The Music Soothes.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

The Better Organized The State, The Duller Its Humanity.

Folks With Most To Complain About Seldom Complain Most.

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

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

Do Ants Get Headaches?

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

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

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

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.

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...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

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.

Reality Is The Page. Life Is The Word.

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.

The Song Instantly Insisted It'd Never Existed.

True Knowledge Without Xperience Is Food Without Sustenance

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

Nothing Is As Eloquent As Nothing.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

I Remain Thankful To God For All His Mercies.

Thankful To God

The Spirit Was Willing But The Flesh Was Weak.

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.

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

Truth Is Singular. Its 'versions' Are Mistruths.

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

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

False Modesty Can Be Worse Than Arrogance.

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

One Fine Day A Predatory World Shall Consume Itself.

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

The Weak Are Meat The Strong Do Eat.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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

Foreign Language

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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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.

Japanese Food Makes Me Feel Particularly Good.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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.

The Body Is The Outermost Layer Of The Mind.

…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 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.

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

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

One's Ribs Shouldn't Be Prison Bars.

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

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.

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.

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