David Mitchell

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__ audience with one__ mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it__uicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what__ 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 __m to witness a grotesqueness.

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

Not a clue _ and, no, I don__ touch drugs. The world__ unstable enough without scrambling your brain for kicks.

Power and moneyLike Pooh Bear and honeyStick fast.

Speak to me about power. What is it?_ I do believe I__ being out-Cambridged. __ou want me to discuss power? Right here and now?_ Her shapely head tilts. __o time except the present._ __kay._ Only for a ten. __ower is the ability to make someone do what they otherwise wouldn__, or deter them from doing what they otherwise would._ Immaculée Constantin is unreadable. __ow?_ __y 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. __bey, or you__l 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__ why we bang up criminals and why even democracies seek to monopolize force._ Immaculée Constantin watches my face as I talk; it__ thrilling and distracting. __eward works by promising __bey and benefit._ This dynamic is at work in, let__ 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__ sneeze booms through the chapel. __ou scratch the surface,_ says Immaculée Constantin. I feel lust and annoyance. __cratch deeper, then._ She brushes a tuft of fluff off her glove and appears to address her hand: __ower 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__ 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._ Immaculée Constantin now looks up at me. __ower 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. __mperious Caesar, dead and turn__ to clay, might stop a hole to keep the wind away._ That thought sickens me, Hugo Lamb, like nothing else. Doesn__ it sicken you?

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

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.

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 __ights,_ the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful

Strip back the beliefs pasted on by governesses, schools, and states, you find indelible truths at one's core.

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

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

The body is the outermost layer of the mind.

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.

Integrity is a bugger, it really is. Lying can get you into difficulties, but to really wind up in the crappers try telling nothing but the truth.

A book can__ be a half-fantasy any more than a woman can be half pregnant

...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__ 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. __ower 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_

In the Belgian backwaters, south of Bruges, there lives a reclusive English composer, named Vyvyan Ayrs. You won__ have heard of him because you__e a musical oaf, but he__ one of the greats.

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