Ghostwritten

by David Mitchell

“The last of the cherry blossom. On the tree, it turns ever more perfect. And when it’s perfect, it falls. And then of course once it hits the ground it gets all mushed up. So it’s only absolutely perfect when it’s falling through the air, this way and that, for the briefest time.… I think that only we Japanese can really understand that, don’t you?”

Beauty is short lived

Never make a big decision which will alter the shape of your life on the basis of a relationship! You may as well take out a mortgage on a house made of sponge cake.

Running monks are as unusual as honest officials.

If I lacked clues in reality, I would have to find them in legends.

Everything is about wanting. Everything. Things happen because of people wanting.

High streets are becoming the same all over the world,

That’s because every city has a high street.

‘Loving somebody’ means ‘wanting something.’ Love makes people do selfish, moronic, cruel, and inhumane things.

this is a choice I made, and that I shouldn’t ask for sympathy. And that’s true. But why did I make that choice? That’s what I wonder about. Because I am me, is the answer. But that just postpones the question. Why am I me?

thing: why people choose what they choose is also down to chance. Why did that gray oily pigeon lose its leg, but that white and brown one didn’t? Chance. Why did that curvaceous model get to model those particular jeans? Chance. Isn’t all this obvious?

There is Truth, and then there is Being Truthful.

“It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.”

Memories are their own descendants masquerading as the ancestors of the present.

Coming back was dangerous, but not coming back was impossible.