David > David's Quotes

“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”
― Franz Kafka

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
― T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“While the wealthy are no more likely to be born stupid than the poor, a wealthy upbringing compounds stupidity while a hardscrabble childhood dilutes it, if only for Darwinian reasons. This is why the elite need a prophylactic barrier of shitty state schools, to prevent the clever kids from the working-class post codes ousting them from the Enclave of Privilege.”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Travel far enough, you meet yourself.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“He could not put down a word without suspecting that it might be the wrong one and that if he held back for another day the intermediate experience would provide the right one. There was no end to that, and Moon fearfully glimpsed himself as a pure writer who after a lifetime of absolutely no output whatsoever, would prepare on his deathbed the single sentence which was the distillation of everything he had saved up, and die before he was able to utter it.”
― Tom Stoppard

“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”
― Gary Provost

“But now it seems possible that the truth about getting older is that there are fewer and fewer things to make fun of until finally there is nothing you are sure you will never be.”
― Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation

“Those are my principles, and if you don't like them...well I have others.”
― Groucho Marx

“When bankers get together for dinner, they discuss Art. When artists get together for dinner, they discuss Money”
― Oscar Wilde

“God made food; the devil the cooks.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées