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Writing is probably one-fifth coming up with the stuff, and four-fifths self-editing again and again and again.

David Mitchell

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David Mitchell
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: January 12
Actor
Composer
Linguist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Text Writer
Translator
Writer
Clarkfield
Minnesota
David Stephen Mitchell
David Henry Mitchell
Writing
Fifths
Fifth
Editing
Coming
Probably
Four
Stuff
Self

More quotes by David Mitchell

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I think we think in terms of stories.
David Mitchell
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If, by happiness, you mean the absence of adversity I and all fabricants are the happiest stratum in corpocracy as genomicists insist. However, if happiness means the conquest of adversity or a sense of purpose, or the xercise of one’s will to power, then of all Nea So Copros’s slaves we surely are the most miserable.
David Mitchell
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Any adaptation is a translation, and there is such a thing as an unreadably faithful translation and I believe a degree of reinterpretatio n for the new language may be not only inevitable but desirable.
David Mitchell
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If swans weren't real myths'd make up.
David Mitchell
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Oh, diplomacy ... it mops up war's spillages legitimizes its outcomes gives the strong state the means to impose its will on a weaker one, while saving its fleets and battalions for weightier opponents.
David Mitchell
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I am, emphatically. Mental illness triggered by xperimental error.
David Mitchell
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'Y' is about the weakest letter of all. 'Y' can't make up its mind if it's a vowel or a consonant, can it?
David Mitchell
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Hate eats the hater the way ogres eat little boys.
David Mitchell
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The healthy can't understand the emptied, the broken.
David Mitchell
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Right, my phone. When these things first appeared, they were so cool. Only when it was too late did people realize they are as cool as electronic tags on remand prisoners.
David Mitchell
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Love's pure free joy when it works, but when it goes bad you pay for the good hours at loan-shark prices.
David Mitchell
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As many truths as men. Occasionally, I glimpse a truer Truth, hiding in imperfect simulacrums of itself, but as I approach, it bestirs itself & moves deeper into the thorny swamp of dissent.
David Mitchell
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The song instantly insisted it'd never existed.
David Mitchell
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I recently bought a cat, but took it back a day later because our personalities clashed.
David Mitchell
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Humans live in a pit of cheating, exploiting, hurting, incarcerating. Every time, the species wastes some part of what it could be. This waste is poisonous.
David Mitchell
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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
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The earth's a door if you press your ear against it.
David Mitchell
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The learnin' mind is the livin' mind, Meronym said, an any sort o'Smart is truesome Smart, old Smart or new high Smart or low.
David Mitchell
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We are only what we know, and I wished to be so much more than I was, sorely.
David Mitchell
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Wars are never cured, they just go into remission for a few years.
David Mitchell