The voices / 219 fragments

David Mitchell

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Archive entries

01Undated

Glass & peace alike betray proof of fragility under repeated blows.

David Mitchell / quote

02Undated

The silences after his last gasp were sung together by a blackbird. I lay there, my eyes unable to close. His were unable to open. I listed the places where I hurt, and how much. My loins felt ripped. Something inside had torn. There were seven places on my body where he had sunk his fangs into my skin and bitten. He'd dug his nails into my neck, and twisted my head to one side, and clawed my face. I hadn't made a noise. He had made all the noise for both of us. Had it hurt him?

David Mitchell / quote

03Undated

One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn't, the wolves and blizzards will be at one's throat all the sooner.

David Mitchell / quote

04Undated

Disco's are tricky. You look a total wally if you dance too early but after one crucial song tips the disco over, you look a sad saddo if you don't.

David Mitchell / quote

05Undated

I’m not sorry it stopped. [on Lady Gaga’s ”Poker Face”]

David Mitchell / quote

06Undated

I've never listened to music lying down. Listening's reading if you close your eyes.Music's a wood you walk through.

David Mitchell / quote

07Undated

In the Belgian backwaters, south of Bruges, there lives a reclusive English composer, named Vyvyan Ayrs. You won’t have heard of him because you’re a musical oaf, but he’s one of the greats.

David Mitchell / quote

08Undated

...Power is lost or won, never created or destroyed. Power is a visitor to, not a possession of, those it empowers. The mad tend to crave it, many of the sane crave it, but the wise worry about its long-term effects. Power is crack cocaine for your ego and battery acid for your soul. Power’s comings and goings, from host to host, via war, marriage, ballet box, diktat, and accident of birth, are the plot of history. The empowered may serve justice, remodel the Earth, transform lush nations into smoking battlefields, and bring down skyscrapers, but power itself is amoral.” Immaculée Constantin now looks up at me. “Power will notice you. Power is watching you now. Carry on as you are, and power will favor you. But power will also laugh at you, mercilessly, as you lie dying in a private clinic, a few fleeting decades from now. Power mocks all its illustrious favorites as they lie dying…

David Mitchell / quote

09Undated

A book can’t be a half-fantasy any more than a woman can be half pregnant

David Mitchell / quote

10Undated

Sometimes John had recorded new compositions, or lines from his new poems. Sometimes he'd just record a busy night in The Green Man. Sometimes sheep, seals, skylarks, the wind turbine. If Liam were home there would be some Liam. The summer fair. The Fastnet Race. I would unfold my map of Clear Island. Those tapes prised the lid off homesickness and rattled out the contents, but always at the bottom was solace.

David Mitchell / quote

11Undated

The body is the outermost layer of the mind.

David Mitchell / quote

12Undated

there're times when i suspect that the mind has a mind of its own. it shows us pictures. pictures of the past and the might-one-day-be. this mind's mind exerts its own will, too, and has its own voice

David Mitchell / quote

13Undated

The learnin' mind is the livin' mind... an' any sort o' smart is truesome smart, old smart or new, high smart or low.

David Mitchell / quote

14Undated

Rights are susceptible to subversion, as even granite is susceptible to erosion. My fifth Declaration posits how, 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 / quote

15Undated

Power is lost or won, never created or destroyed. Power is a visitor to, not a possession of, those it empowers. The mad tend to crave it, many of the sane crave it, but the wise worry about its long-term side effects.

David Mitchell / quote

16Undated

The empowered may serve justice, remodel the Earth, transform lush nations into smoking battlefields, and bring down skyscrapers, but power itself is amoral.

David Mitchell / quote

17Undated

Power and moneyLike Pooh Bear and honeyStick fast.

David Mitchell / quote

18Undated

Not a clue – and, no, I don’t touch drugs. The world’s unstable enough without scrambling your brain for kicks.

David Mitchell / quote

19Undated

Do," said Louisa finally, "whatever you can't not do.

David Mitchell / quote

20Undated

The lovelorn, the cry-for-helpers, all mawkish tragedians who give suicide a bad name are the idiots who rush it, like amateur conductors. .A true suicide is a paced, disciplined certainty. People pontificate, 'Suicide is selfishness.' Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call it a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reasons: 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. The only selfishness lies in ruining strangers’ days by forcing ’em to witness a grotesqueness.

David Mitchell / quote

21Undated

Judith Rey watches the young woman. Once upon a time, I had a baby daughter. I dressed her in frilly frocks, enrolled her for ballet classes, and sent her to horse-riding camp five summers in a row. But look at her. She turned into Lester anyway. She kisses Luisa’s forehead. Luisa frowns, suspiciously, like a teenager. “What?

David Mitchell / quote

22Undated

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 / quote

23Undated

Cynicism can blind one to subtler virtues

David Mitchell / quote

24Undated

A wise man does not step betwixt the beast and his meat

David Mitchell / quote