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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
Self
Writing
Fifths
Fifth
Editing
Coming
Probably
Four
Stuff

More quotes by David Mitchell

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What do I miss? Second-hand bookshops where I can find things I had no idea I wanted. AbeBooks helps, but it doesn't have that smell.
David Mitchell
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I lost my balance when the train pulled away, but a human crumple zone buffered my fall. We stayed like that, half fallen. Diagonal People.
David Mitchell
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We are both busy people, so let's cut the small talk.
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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There's a link between bigotry and bad spelling.
David Mitchell
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I'm not a great deep political thinker.
David Mitchell
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Leaves turned to soil beneath my feet. Thus it is, trees eat themselves.
David Mitchell
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The world never stops unmaking what the world never stops making. But who says the world has to make sense?
David Mitchell
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Try this for deviancy: fabricants are mirrors held up to purebloods' conscience what purebloods see reflected there sickens them. So they blame you for holding the mirror. I hid my shock by asking when purebloods might blame themselves. Mephi replied, History suggests, not until they are made to.
David Mitchell
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Have you noticed, said John, how countries call theirs 'sovereign nuclear deterrents,' but call the other countries' ones 'weapons of mass destruction'?
David Mitchell
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... 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
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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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Mother used to say escape is never further than the nearest book.
David Mitchell
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- This isn't an interrogation or a trail. Your version of the truth is the only thing that matters. -Truth is singular. It's 'versions' are mistruths.
David Mitchell
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The her that lived in her looked out through her eyes, through my eyes, and at the me that lives in me.
David Mitchell
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Torturous advances won over generations can be lost by a single stroke of a myopic president's pen or a vainglorious general's sword.
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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In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul for the human species, selfishness is extinction.
David Mitchell
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I think we think in terms of stories.
David Mitchell
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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