David Mitchell

I find a certain comfort," confesses Marinus, "in humanity's helplessness.

...I shall pledge myself to the Abolitionist cause, because I owe my life to a self-freed slave & because I must begin somewhere. I hear my father-in-law's response: 'Oho, fine, Whiggish sentiments, Adam. But don't tell *me* about justice! Ride to Tennessee on an ass & convince the rednecks that they are merely white-washed negroes & their negroes that they are black-washed Whites! Sail to the Old World, tell 'em their imperial slaves' rights are as inalienable as the Queen of Belgium's! Oh, you'll grow hoarse, poor & gray in caucuses! You'll be spat on, shot at, lynched, pacified with medals, spurned by backwoodsmen! Crucified! Naïve, dreaming Adam. He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!' Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?

After ten pages I felt that Nietzsche was reading me, not I him.

Lady Moon rose an' gazed o'er my busted'n'beautsome Valleys with silv'ry'n'sorryin' eyes, an' the dingos mourned for the died uns.

Hobbies are for pleasure, but rituals keep you going.

Think larger. Redraw what is possible.

Oh, once you__e been initiated into the Elderly, the world doesn__ want you back._ Veronica settled herself in a rattan chair and adjusted her hat just so. __e__y whom I mean anyone over sixty__ommit two offenses just by existing. One is Lack of Velocity. We drive too slowly, walk too slowly, talk too slowly. The world will do business with dictators, perverts, and drug barons of all stripes, but being slowed down it cannot abide. Our second offence is being Everyman__ memento mori. The world can only get comfy in shiny-eyed denial if we are out of sight.

I asked, how is knowledge found? 'You must learn how to read, little sister,' he said.

Anna would like you, he thinks, looking into her face. Anna would like you.

One's ribs shouldn't be prison bars.

On bad days you wonder, __hy not just back off from the war and lead a quiet metalife?

...if you bare your arse to a vengeful unicorn, the number of possible outcomes dwindles to one.

Me and Vinny are dead careful, and we only had sex once without a condom, our first time, and it's a scientific fact that virgins can't get pregnant. Stella told me.

This isn__ lust. Lust wants, does the obvious, and pads back into the forest. Love is greedier. Love wants round-the-clock care; protection; rings, vows, joint accounts; scented candles on birthdays; life insurance. Babies. Love__ a dictator.

The world's a headmaster who works on your faults. I don't mean in a mystical or Jesus way. More how you'll keep tripping over a hidden step, over and over, till you finally understand: Watch out for that step! Everything that's wrong with us, if we're too selfish or too Yessir, Nosir, Three bags full sir or too anything, that's a hidden step. Either you suffer the consequences of not noticing your fault forever or, one day, you do notice it, and fix it. Joke is, once you get it into your brain about that hidden step and think, Hey, life isn't such a shithouse after all again, then BUMP! Down you go, a whole new flight of hidden steps.There are always more.

Young mothers are the most vicious tribe in the world if you don't fit in.

Secrets affect you more than you__ think. You lie to keep them hidden. You steer talk away from them. You worry someone__l discover yours and tell the world. You think you are in charge of the secret, but isn__ it the secret who__ actually using you?

A single night is stuffed with minutes, but they leak out, one by one.