David Mitchell

Novelist

1969-01-12

Quotes by David Mitchell

• Speak to me about power. What is it?— I do believe I'm being out-Cambridged. "You want me to discuss power? Right here and now?" Her shapely head tilts. "No time except the present." "Okay." Only for a ten. "Power is the ability to make someone do what they otherwise wouldn't, or deter them from doing what they otherwise would." Immacule Constantin is unreadable. "How?" "By coercion and reward. Carrots and sticks, though in bad light one looks much like the other. Coercion is predicated upon the fear of violence or suffering. "Obey, or you'll regret it.' Tenth-century Danes exacted tribute by it; the cohesion of the Warsaw Pact rested upon it; and playground bullies rule by it. Law and order relies upon it. That's why we bang up criminals and why even democracies seek to monopolize force.— Immacule Constantin watches my face as I talk; it's thrilling and distracting. "Reward works by promising "Obey and benefit.' This dynamic is at work in, let's say, the positioning of NATO bases in nonmember states, dog training, and putting up with a shitty job for your working life. How am I doing?— Security Goblin's sneeze booms through the chapel. "You scratch the surface," says Immacule Constantin. I feel lust and annoyance. "Scratch deeper, then." She brushes a tuft of fluff off her glove and appears to address her hand: "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. 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, ballot 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." Immacule 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. "Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, might stop a hole to keep the wind away.' That thought sickens me, Hugo Lamb, like nothing else. Doesn't it sicken you?

  Read quote

• When I'm in doubt - as I am now - I ask myself, 'What would Carl Jung do?' - and act accordingly.

  Read quote

• I would agree with your statement that many of my protagonists are outsiders. I wonder if we all are, and even people who don't think they are, and they're just better at masking it. When we shut our bedroom door at night, however well-integrated we think we are with the rest of society, maybe there's something illusory about that...

  Read quote

• The sacred is a fine hiding place for the profane.

  Read quote

• Any society's upper-crust is riddled with immorality, how else d'you think they keep their power? Reputation is king of the public sphere, not private. It is dethroned by public acts.

  Read quote

• Cynicism can blind one to subtler virtues

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

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

  Read quote

• Nonfiction that smells like fiction is neither.

  Read quote

• 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?

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

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

  Read quote

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

  Read quote

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

  Read quote

• 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

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

• Power and moneyLike Pooh Bear and honeyStick fast.

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

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

  Read quote

• The body is the outermost layer of the mind.

  Read quote