Utopia Avenue

by David Mitchell

“ ‘Utopia’ means ‘no place.’ An avenue is a place. So is music. When we’re playing well, I’m here, but elsewhere, too. That’s the paradox. Utopia is unattainable. Avenues are everywhere.”

“Bruce was charming, but charm in a guy is a warning sign. Like black and yellow stripes in nature mean, Watch out, there are stings near this honey.”

Jasper notes that Jesus’s disciples were, essentially, hippies: long hair, gowns, stoner expressions, irregular employment, spiritual convictions, dubious sleeping arrangements, and a guru.

Dean never saw the point of church. “God works in mysterious ways” seemed no different from “Heads I win, tails you lose.”

“Marriage is an anchor, lads. Stops you drifting onto rocks, but stops you voyaging as well.”

Jasper. Speak.” Jasper drew a spiral on the steamy glass. “Eight days.”

“My Dutch grandfather used to say, ‘If you don’t know what to do, do nothing for eight days.’ ” Dean asked, “Why eight?” “Less than eight is haste. More than eight is procrastination. Eight days is long enough for the world to shuffle the deck and deal you another hand.”

‘Grief is the bill of love, fallen due.’

“Does acid cure you of color blindness?” asks Dean. “No,” says Jerry, “but it makes you wonder if you’ve actually been living not in the real world but only a description of it.”

“So when we look at a thing,” says Dean, “we change what it is.” “Which is exactly why we never see things as they are,” says Jerry. “Only as we are.”