David Mitchell

“If I was the pope, I'd've made Mrs. de Roo a saint. On the spot.”

“¡Y cuando exhales el último suspiro, sólo entonces, te darás cuenta de que tu vida no ha sido más que una minúscula gota en un océano infinito!Y sin embargo, ¿qué es un océano sino una multitud de gotas?”

“(...)si nos convencemos de que la humanidad puede trascender colmillos y garras, si nos convencemos de que las diversas razas y credos pueden compartir pacíficamente la tierra, (...)si nos convencemos de que los gobernantes deben ser justos, de que la violencia debe dominarse, de que el poder ha de ser responsable y las riquezas de la tierra y los océanos deben repartirse equitativamente entre todos, este mundo se hará realidad. No me engaño. Ya sé que es el más difícil de los mundos posibles.”

“(...)entre todas las razas del mundo, nuestra sed, o mejor dicho, nuestra avidez, de tesoros, de oro, de especias y de dominio, ¡oh, si!, sobre todo del dulce dominio, ¡es la más aguda, la más insaciable, la más carente de todo escrúpulo! Es esta avidez la que alimenta nuestro progreso, no sé si con fines diabólicos o divinos. Ni usted tampoco lo sabe, señor. Ni yo tengo el menor interés en saberlo. Simplemente, me alegro de que el Creador me arrojase del lado de los vencedores.”

“La segunda ley de la supervivencia afirma que no existe una segunda ley. O comes o te comen. Punto.”

“I said something about reading not being knowledge, about knowledge without experience being food without sustenance.”

“Pues yo me hago tres preguntas muy simples: ¿Cómo ha obtenido ese poder? ¿Cómo lo está utilizando? Y: ¿cómo se le puede arrebatar al muy hijo de puta?”

“El poder, el tiempo, la gravedad, el amor. Las fuerzas que de verdad mueven el cotarro son invisibles.”

“Quienquiera que se inventase eso de que el dinero no hace la felicidad, se regocija Lloyd Hooks, está claro que no tenía bastante.”

“Había leído lo bastante como para apreciar mi ingenio literario, pero no lo bastante como para identificar mis fuentes de conocimiento. Me encantan las mujeres así. Podía decirle cosas como: "La principal diferencia entre la felicidad y la alegría es que la felicidad es sólida, mientras que la alegría es líquida" y, escudándome en su ignorancia de Salinger, sentirme ingenioso, seductor y, porqué no decirlo, joven. Notaba que Ernie me miraba fijamente mientras yo me daba pisto, pero qué diablos, pensaba yo. Un hombre tiene derecho a flirtear.”

“Es un ciclo tan antiguo como el tribalismo. Todo comienza con la ignorancia. La ignorancia genera miedo. El miedo genera odio y el odio genera violencia. La violencia provoca más violencia hasta que la única ley viene dictada por la voluntad del más fuerte.”

“Las autobiografías ya de por sí son infumables, ¡pero anda que las novelitas! Héroe emprende viaje, forastero llega a la ciudad, alguien persigue algo, lo consigue o no lo consigue, conflicto entre voluntades opuestas. "Admiradme, porque soy una metáfora".”

“Meni dođe da cijeli ovaj debilni svijet raspalim po njuški, majku mu, pa da ga tabam dok mu napokon ne dođe iz dupeta u glavu da je milijun puta važnije da nikoga ne povrijediš nego da na kraju likuješ.”

“Embrace your enemy,” the elders urged, “to prevent him striking you.” (“Embrace your enemy,” Henry quipped, “to feel his dagger tickle your kidneys.”)”

“A no-name place, as far as I could see, but it had a miserable cafe-cum-garage-cum-funeral parlor shared by a gang of silent locals and many flies who wheeled through the air like drugged angels of death.”

“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.”

“I wonder if you encountered this dictum first spoken by a twentieth-century statesman: "An abyss cannot be crossed in two steps.”

“What is it that ties shapes of land to the human heart, Mo?”

“...A mountain you're plannin' on climbin' ain't the same as the one you ain't. It ain't so pretty...”

“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.”

“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.”

“She was widely read enough to appreciate my literary wit but not so widely read that she knew my sources. I like that in a woman.”

“She has to lose her pre-Copernican view of a universe revolving around herself.”

“...his deceased wife, watches her husband from the photograph on his console desk.”

“A trio of teenagers, dressed like Prostitute Barbie, approached, drift-netting the width of the pavement.”

“Memory Serves." Duplicitous couplet.”

“What is "poker"? A card game where abler liars take money off less able liars.”

“He chiseled open the fault lines in the others' personalities.”

“I'm shoutin' back more'n forty long years at myself, yay,...Oy, list'n! Times are you're weak 'gainst the world! Times are you can't do nothin'! That ain't your fault, it's this busted world's fault is all! But no matter how loud I shout, ...he don't hear me nor never will.”

“Sunlight bent around the world, lending fragile color to wildflowers.”

“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 dust was deep and crisp and even.”

“Because her laughter spurts through a blowhole in the top of her head and sprays all over the morning.”

“Cruelty has never made me smile.”

“Pain is strong, aye - but friends' eyes, more strong." -Autua”

“Scholars discern motions of history & formulate these motions into rules that govern the rises & falls of civilizations. My belief runs contrary, however. To wit: history admits no rules, only outcomes. What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts and virtuous acts. What precipitates acts? Belief.”

“We cut a pack of cards called historical context- our generation, Sixsmith, cut tens, jacks and queens. Adrian's cut threes, fours, and fives. That's all.”

“Rights are susceptible to subversion, as even granite is susceptible to erosion.”

“Belief, like fear or love, is a force to be understood as we understand the theory of relativity and principals of uncertainty. Phenomena that determine the course of our lives. Yesterday, my life was headed in one direction. Today, it is headed in another. Yesterday, I believe I would never have done what I did today. These forces that often remake time and space, that can shape and alter who weimagine ourselves to be, begin long before we are born and continue after we perish. Our lives and our choices, like quantum trajectories, are understood moment to moment. That each point of intersection, each encounter, suggest a new potential direction. Proposition, I have fallen in love with Luisa Rey. Is this possible? I just met her and yet, I feel like something important has happened to me.”

“Un libro leído a medias es una aventura amorosa incompleta.”

“Hay tantas verdades como hombres. De vez en cuando, alcanzo a vislumbrar una Verdad más verdadera, escondida entre simulacros imperfectos de sí misma, pero en cuanto me acerco, se agita y se hunde más todavía en la espinosa ciénaga del desacuerdo.”

“La paz es como el cristal: si se golpea repetidamente, termina mostrando su fragilidad.”

“Beautiful words ruin your poetry. A touch of beauty enhances a dish, but you throw a hill of it inton the pot! No, the palate becomes nauseous. You belief a poem must be beautiful, or it can have no excellence. I am right? Sort of. Your "sort of" is annoying. A yes, or a no, or a qualification please. "Sort of" is an idle loubard, an ignorant vandale. "Sort of" says, "I am ashamed of clarity and precision." So we try again. You belief a poem must be beautiful or it is not a poem. I am right? Yes. Yes. Idiots labor in this misconception. Beauty is not excellence. Beauty is distraction, beauty is cosmetics, beauty is ultimately fatigue.”

“A weapon men use against women is the refusal to take them seriously.”

“Oh, bein' young ain't easy 'cos ev'rythin' you're puzzlin'n'anxin' you're puzzlin'n'anxin' it for the first time.”

“All revolutions are the sheerest fantasy until they happen; then they become historical inevitabilities.”

“Time is what stops history happening at once; time is the speed at which the past disappears.”

“The soul is a verb. . . . Not a noun.”

“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?”

“By each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”