Eric > Eric's Quotes

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

“My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“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.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Fantasy. Lunacy.
All revolutions are, until they happen, then they are historical inevitabilities.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Time is what stops history happening at once; time is the speed at which the past disappears.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“I believe there is another world waiting for us. A better world. And I'll be waiting for you there.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Whoever opined "Money can't buy you happiness" obviously had far too much of the stuff.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“She was widely read enough to appreciate my literary wit but not so widely read that she knew my sources. I like that in a woman.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Exposition: the workings of the actual past + the virtual past may be illustrated by an event well known to collective history, such as the sinking of the Titanic. The disaster as it actually occurred descends into obscurity as its eyewitnesses die off, documents perish + the wreck of the ship dissolves in its Atlantic grave. Yet a virtual sinking of the Titanic, created from reworked memories, papers, hearsay, fiction--in short, belief--grows ever "truer." The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming + ever more problematic to access + reconstruct: in contrast, the virtual past is malleable, ever-brightening + ever more difficult to circumvent/expose as fraudulent.

The present presses the virtual past into its own service, to lend credence to its mythologies + legitimacy to the imposition of will. Power seeks + is the right to "landscape" the virtual past. (He who pays the historian calls the tune.)

Symmetry demands an actual + virtual future too. We imagine how next week, next year, or 2225 will shape up--a virtual future, constructed by wishes, prophecies + daydreams. This virtual future may influence the actual future, as in a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the actual future will eclipse our virtual one as surely as tomorrow eclipses today. Like Utopia, the actual future + the actual past exist only in the hazy distance, where they are no good to anyone.

Q: Is there a meaningful distinction between one simulacrum of smoke, mirrors + shadows--the actual past--from another such simulacrum--the actual future?

One model of time: an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments, each "shell" (the present) encased inside a nest of "shells" (previous presents) I call the actual past but which we perceive as the virtual past. The doll of "now"likewise encases a nest of presents yet to be, which I call the actual future but which we perceive as the virtual future.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“... in a cycle as old as tribalism, ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only "rights", the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Do," said Louisa finally, "whatever you can't not do.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“I elbowed my way into the grubby café, bought a pie that tasted of shoe polish and a pot of tea with cork crumbs floating in it, and eavesdropped on a pair of Shetland pony breeders. Despondency makes one hanker after lives one never led. Why have you given your life to books, TC? Dull, dull, dull! The memoirs are bad enough, but all that ruddy fiction! Hero goes on a journey, stranger comes to town, somebody wants something, they get it or they don't, will is pitted against will. "Admire me, for I am a metaphor.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“The Ghost of Sir Felix Finch whines, "But it's been done a hundred times before!"--as if there could be anything not done a hundred thousand times between Aristophanes and Andrew Void-Webber! As if Art is the What, not the How!”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“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.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“How lazily "xperts" dismiss what they fail to understand!”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Try this for deviancy: fabricants are mirrors held up to purebloods' conscience; what purebloods see reflected there sickens them. So they blame you for holding the mirror."

I hid my shock by asking when purebloods might blame themselves.

Mephi replied, "History suggests, not until they are made to.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Pain is strong, aye - but friends' eyes, more strong." I told him that he knows next to nothing about me & I know nothing about him. He jabbed at his eyes & jabbed at mine, as if that single gesture were ample explanation.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Eva. Every day I've climbed up the belfry chanting a lucky chant at one syllable per beat, "To-day-to-day-let-her-be-here-to-day-to-day.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“...and there, in the background, the brite spring sky's sediment had sunk to a dark band of blue. Ah, it mesmerized me...like the snow had done. All the woe of the words, "I am" seemed dissolved there, painlessly, peacefully.
Hae-Joo announced, "The Ocean.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“I wonder if you encountered this dictum first spoken by a twentieth-century statesman: "An abyss cannot be crossed in two steps.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“What is "poker"? A card game where abler liars take money off less able liars.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“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.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Snarling an oath from an Icelandic saga, I reclaimed my place at the head of the queue.

"Oy!" yelled a punk rocker, with studs in his cranium. "There's a fackin' queue!"

Never apologize, advises Lloyd George. Say it again, only this time, ruder. "I know there's a 'fackin' queue'! I already queued in it once and I am not going to queue in it again just because Nina Simone over there won't sell me a ruddy ticket!"

A colored yeti in a clip-on uniform swooped. "Wassa bovver?"

"This old man here reckons his colostomy bag entitles him to jump the queue," said the skinhead, "and make racist slurs about the lady of Afro-Caribbean extraction in the advance-travel window."

I couldn't believe I was hearing this.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Your life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean." "Yet, what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Luisa rolls her napkin into a compact ball. "I ask three simple questions. How did he get that power? How is he using it? And how can it be taken off the sonofabitch?”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

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

“My friend is composing an epic in Byronic stanzas entitled "True History of Autua, Last Moriori" & interrupts my journal writing to ask what rhymes with what: - "Streams of blood"? "Themes of mud"? "Robin Hood"?”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“What if the differences between social strata stem not from genomics or inherent xcellence or even dollars, but merely differences in knowledge? Would this not mean the whole Pyramid is built on shifting sands?"
I speculated such a suggestion could be seen as a serious deviancy.
Melphi seemed delited. "Try this for deviancy: fabricants are mirrors held up to purebloods' consciences; what purebloods see reflected there sickens them. So they blame you for holding up the mirror."
I hid my shock by asking when purebloods might blame themselves.
Melphi relplied, "History suggests, not until they are made to.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas