Cloud Atlas

by David Mitchell

Peace, though beloved of our Lord, is a cardinal virtue only if your neighbors share your conscience.

A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.

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.

The devil, Sixsmith, is in the pronouns.

‘Most cities are nouns, but New York is a verb.’

“Admire me, for I am a metaphor.”

Perhaps those deprived of beauty perceive it most instinctively.

Fantasy. Lunacy. All revolutions are, until they happen, then they are historical inevitabilities.

nothing is as eloquent as nothing.

“The most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid”

if war’s first victim is truth, its second is clerical efficiency.

The color of monotony is blue.