David Mitchell

“Patience's design flaw became obvious for the first time in my life: the outcome is decided not during the course of play but when the cards are shuffled, before the game even begins. How pointless is that?”

“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.”

“Ruddy hell, the cold smacked my face with an iron spade! Now I knew why northerners go in for beards, woad, and body grease.”

“Glass & peace alike betray proof of fragility under repeated blows.”

“Marinus blows out a mouthful of air. "Did close-range artillery knock any sense into you, or are we staying?”

“Marinus is leaning on the railing. "Warehouse number six needs rebuilding; there's a big hole in the seawall behind the guild; Constable Kosugi shall probably"--from Seawall Lane comes an almighty sigh and crash--"shall certainly be lodging elsewhere tonight, and I pissed my thigh from fear. Our glorious flag, as you see, is unhurt. Half of their shots flew over us"--the doctor looks landward--"and caused damage ashore. Quid non mortalia pectora cogis, Auri sacra fames.”

“I believe there is another world waiting for us. A better world. And I'll be waiting for you there.”

“One can spot a fellow musician in any context, even amongst policemen. The craziest-eyed, unruliest-haired one, either hungry-skinny or jovial-portly.”

“I have no earliest memories, Archivist. Every day of my life in Papa Song was as uniform as the fries we vended.”

“...I shall pledge myself to the Abolitionist cause, because I owe my life to a self-freed slave & because I must begin somewhere. I hear my father-in-law's response: 'Oho, fine, Whiggish sentiments, Adam. But don't tell *me* about justice! Ride to Tennessee on an ass & convince the rednecks that they are merely white-washed negroes & their negroes that they are black-washed Whites! Sail to the Old World, tell 'em their imperial slaves' rights are as inalienable as the Queen of Belgium's! Oh, you'll grow hoarse, poor & gray in caucuses! You'll be spat on, shot at, lynched, pacified with medals, spurned by backwoodsmen! Crucified! 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 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?”

“Surgeons are a singular brotherhood, Adam. To us, people aren't sacred beings crafted in the Almighty's image, no, people are joints of meat; diseased, leathery meat, yes, but meat ready for the skewer & the spit." He mimicked my usual voice, very well. "'But why *me*, Henry, are we not friends?' Well, Adam, even friends are made out of meat.”

“A man like me has no business with this substance "beauty," yet here she is, in these soundproofed chambers of my heart.”

“. . .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.”

“The her that lived in her looked out through her eyes, through my eyes, and at the me that lives in me.”

“The clock’s pendulum catches the firelight, and in the rattle-breathed final moments of Jacob de Zoet, amber shadows in the far corner coagulate into a woman’s form. She slips between the bigger, taller onlookers unnoticed … … and adjusts her headscarf, the better to hide her burn. She places her cool palms on Jacob’s fever-glazed face.Jacob sees himself, when he was young, in her narrow eyes. Her lips touch the place between his eyebrows. A well-waxed paper door slides open.”

“I could tell you a hundred things, thinks Jacob, and nothing at all.”

“Shiroyama’s heart stops. The earth’s pulse beats against his ear. An inch away is a go clamshell stone, perfect and smooth … … a black butterfly lands on the white stone, and unfolds its wings.”

“One's ribs shouldn't be prison bars.”

“Orito banishes all thoughts of Jacob de Zoet, and recalls Jacob de Zoet.”

“[...] Senecas Warnung an Nero: Ganz gleich, wie viele von uns du tötest, dein Nachfolger wird nicht darunter sein”

“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.”

“Ce învățătură se cere trasă? Că Pacea, oricît de plăcută în ochii Domnului Dumnezeului nostru, este o virtute cardinală numai dacă si vecinii văd lucrurile la fel.”

“Cîți oameni atîtea adevăruri. Cînd și cînd, parcă zăresc un Adevăr mai adevărat, care se ascunde în spatele unor simulacre imprefecte, dar, cînd încerc sa m-apropii de el, se face nevăzut si se afundă si mai adîncă în mlaștina înșelătoare a dezacordului.”

“The heating systems composed works in the style of John Cage.”

“Todas las fronteras son convenciones, hasta las nacionales. Y todas se pueden rebasar, pero primero hay que concebir esa posibilidad.”

“Tan sólo tres o cuatro veces en mis años mozos divisé fugazmente las islas de la Dicha antes de que se esfumaran en la niebla, en las borrascas, entre frentes fríos, vendavales y mareas en contra... Las tomé equivocadamente por la condición adulta. Di por hecho que serían una presencia constante en mi trayecto vital y no me preocupé de anotar la latitud, la longitud, la ruta de recalada. Maldito jovenzuelo idiota. Lo que daría ahora por tener un mapa inmutable de lo veleidoso e inefable... Por tener, por así decirlo, un atlas de las nubes.”

“Tumbado en el fondo de la canoa, veía balancearse las nubes. Las almas surcan las eras como las nubes los cielos, y aunque las nubes cambien continuamente de forma, color y tamaño, una nube siempre es una nube, y un alma siempre es un alma. ¿Quién sabe de dónde vienen las nubes y dónde estará el alma mañana? Sólo lo sabe Sonmi: el este y el oeste, la brújula y el atlas, sí señor, el atlas de las nubes.”

“The truth is "#9dream" is a descendant of "Norwegian Wood". Both are ghost stories. "She" in "Norwegian Wood" curses you with loneliness. The "Two spirits dancing so strange" in "#9dream" bless you with harmony. But people prefer loneliness to harmony.”

“Ayrs let long moments fall away. ‘You’re young, Frobisher, you’re rich, you’ve got a brain, and by all accounts you’re not wholly repugnant. I’m not sure why you stay on here.’……Couldn’t say if Ayrs felt humor, pity, nostalgia or scorn…Jocasta seemed angry with me. ‘What?’ I hissed. ‘My husband loves you,’ said the wife, dressing.”

“Preemptive strike,' said Huw, 'must mean not declaring war until your cameras are in position.”

“Ambassadors are idiots who possess only one skill: outkowtowing one another at official functions.”

“Little girls are like old cats. If they don't like you nothing on Earth will make them pretend to.”

“I added 'writers' to my list of people not to trust. They make everything up.”

“Nothing often poses in men as wisdom.”

“Uncle Tarmac says vehicles always resemble their owners, and likes advising my female cousins to judge whether boyfriends will make decent husbands or not by observing how they treat or mistreat their cars.”

“Politicians and sports coaches both need to be smart enough to master the game, but dumb enough to think it matters.”

“She let him finish her sentences for her for so long that now he starts them too.”

“All these people like my mother paying counselors and clinics to reattach them to reality; all of us people here paying Sony and Sega to reattach us to unreality.”

“A Muzak version of 'Imagine' comes on and John Lennon wakes up in his tomb, appalled.”

“Tokyo is too close up to see, sometimes. There are no distances and everything is above your head - dentists, kindergartens, dance studios. Even the roads and walkways are up on murky stilts. An evil-twin Venice with all the water drained away.”

“Now and then goldfish splish and gleam, like new pennies dropped in water.”

“If losers can exploit what their adversaries teach them, yes, losers can become winners in the long term.”

“Now I seen Mauna Kena from Honokaa b'fore, o'course, but a mountain you're planning on climbin' ain't the same as the one you ain't. It ain't so pretty, nay.”

“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.”

“Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?”

“Eva knows I'm terra incognita and explores me unhurriedly, like you did. Because she's lean as a boy. Because her scent is almonds, meadow grass. Because if I smile at her ambition to be an Egyptologist, she kicks my shin under the table. Because she makes me think about something other than myself. Because even when serious she shines. Because she prefers travelogues to Sir Walter Scott, prefers Billy Mayerl to Mozart, and couldn't tell a C major from a sergeant major. Because I, only I, see her smile a fraction before it reaches her face. Because Emperor Robert is not a good man - his best part is commandeered by his unperformed music - but she gives me that rarest smile, anyway. Because we listened to nightjars. Because her laughter spurts through a blowhole in the top of her head and sprays all over the morning. Because a man like me has no business with this substance "beauty," yet here she is, in these soundproof chambers of my heart.”

“Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan't know until it's finished, and by then it'll be too late, but it's the first thing I think of when I wake, and the last thing I think of before I fall asleep, even if J. is in my bed. She should understand, the artist lives in two worlds.”

“Other nights, Ayrs likes me to read him poetry, especially his beloved Keats. He whispers the verses as I recite, as if his voice is leaning on mine.”

“Oh, aging is ruddy unbearable! The I's we were yearn to breathe the world's air again, but can they ever break out from these calcified cocoons?”

“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.”