Black Swan Green Quotes

“If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, ‘When you’re ready’.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“Trees're always a relief, after people.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“Me, I want to bloody kick this moronic bloody world in the bloody teeth over and over till it bloody understands that not hurting people is ten bloody thousand times more bloody important than being right.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“...it’s not just the person who fills a house, it’s their I’ll be back later!s, their toothbrushes and unused hats and coats, their belongingnesses.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“These jokes the world plays, they're not funny at all.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“The world never stops unmaking what the world never stops making. But who says the world has to make sense? ”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“It'll be all right." Julia's gentleness makes it worse. "In the end, Jace."
"It doesn't feel very all right."
"That's because it's not the end.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“Often I think boys don’t become men. Boys just get papier-mâchéd inside a man’s mask. Sometimes you can tell the boy is still in there.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“Listening's reading if you close your eyes. Music's a wood you walk through.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“Probably" is a word with an emergency ejector seat.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“Good moods’re as fragile as eggs...Bad moods’re as fragile as bricks.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“Teachers're always using that "in your own words." I hate that. Authors knit their sentences tight. It's their job. Why make us unpick them, just to put it back together more shonkily? How're you s'posed to say Kapellmeister if you can't say Kapellmeister?”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“Maybe then you comprehend, speaking one language only is a prison!”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“War may be an auction for countries. For soldiers it's a lottery.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“Human beings need to watch out for reasonless niceness too. It's never reasonless and its reason's not usually nice.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“Secrets affect you more than you’d think. You lie to keep them hidden. You steer talk away from them. You worry someone’ll discover yours and tell the world. You think you are in charge of the secret, but isn’t it the secret who’s actually using you?”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“Fire’s the sun, unwindin’ itself out o’ the wood.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“Dead things show you what you’ll be too one day.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“How could I know a famished heart will eat its mind? Can kill its body?”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“If your words're true, they're armed.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“If swans weren't real, myths'd make them up.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“Music’s a wood you walk through.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“Contrary to popular wisdom, bullies are rarely cowards.
Bullies come in various shapes and sizes. Observe yours. Gather intelligence.
Shunning one hopeless battle is not an act of cowardice.
Hankering for security or popularity makes you weak and vulnerable.
Which is worse: Scorn earned by informers? Misery endured by victims?
The brutal May have been molded by a brutality you cannot exceed.
Let guile be your ally.
Respect earned by integrity cannot be lost without your consent.
Don't laugh at what you don't find funny.
Don't support an opinion you don't hold.
The independent befriend the independent.
Adolescence dies in its fourth year. You live to be eighty.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“Time in the wood's older than time in clocks, and truer.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“Green is made of yellow and blue, nothing else, but when you look at green, where’ve the yellow and the blue gone? Somehow this is to do with Moran’s dad. Somehow this is to do with everyone and everything.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“This "Not Today" attitude of yours is a cancer. Cancer of the character. It stunts your growth.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“I’d always worried but kissing’s not so tricky. Your lips know what to do, just like sea anenomes know what to do. Kissing spins you, like Flying Tea-Cups. Oxygen the girl breathes out, you breathe in.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“There no such thing as something! Why? Because everything's already turning into something else!”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“The world unmakes stuff faster than people can make it.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“War's an auction where whoever can pay the most in damage and still be standing wins.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green