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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 pass through many Me's in the course of my day, each one selfish with his time. The Lying-in-Bed me and the Enjoying-the-Hot-Shower Me are particularly selfish. The Late Me loathes the pair of them.
David Mitchell
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... but it is attitude, not years, that condemns one to the ranks of the Undead, or else proffers salvation. In the domain of the young there dwells many an Undead soul. They rush about so, their inner putrefaction is concealed for a few decades, that is all.
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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Gosh. The subjunctive is always the first to go.
David Mitchell
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I have always unswervingly held, that God, in our civilizing world, manifests Himself not in the miracles of biblical age, but in progress. It is progress that leads humanity up the ladder towards the God-head. No Jacob's ladder this, no, but rather Civilization's Ladder, if you will.
David Mitchell
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Dead things show you what you’ll be too one day.
David Mitchell
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I love HBO productions, actually, like 'The Wire.'
David Mitchell
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Japanese food makes me feel particularly good.
David Mitchell
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. . .my dreams are the single unpredictable factor in my zoned days and nights. Nobody allots them, or censors them. Dreams are all I have ever truly owned.
David Mitchell
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She has to lose her pre-Copernican view of a universe revolving around herself.
David Mitchell
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maybe the meaning of life lies in looking for it
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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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
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A life spent shaping a world I want Jackson to inherit, not one I fear Jackson shall inherit, this strikes me as a life worth the living.
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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Your turn has come to sift through the dreck of humanity for rare specks of originality
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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One fine day a predatory world shall consume itself.
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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Little girls are like old cats. If they don't like you nothing on Earth will make them pretend to.
David Mitchell