Top 500 David Mitchell Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “The human world is made of stories, not people.”

— David Mitchell

152. “Mother used to say escape is never further than the nearest book.”

— David Mitchell

153. “This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself.”

— David Mitchell

154. “Little girls are like old cats. If they don’t like you nothing on Earth will make them pretend to.”

— David Mitchell

155. “If your words’re true, they’re armed.”

— David Mitchell

156. “Folks with most to complain about seldom complain most.”

— David Mitchell

157. “I think we think in terms of stories.”

— David Mitchell

158. “I often lose myself in the Sudoku-like challenges of making a book work.”

— David Mitchell

159. “One cannot pass by without thinking of the density of men in the ground.”

— David Mitchell

160. “Gosh. The subjunctive is always the first to go.”

— David Mitchell

161. “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.”

— David Mitchell

162. “She has to lose her pre-Copernican view of a universe revolving around herself.”

— David Mitchell

163. “The downside is the fear of something happening to her. The pressure of there being two bodies in the world that I want to keep from harm and only being able to watchfully inhabit one of them. I wonder if you know what I mean. I hope that you do, for your sake. It’s a worry I’ll have to learn to live with because I’m definitely out of wishes.”

— David Mitchell

164. “When insolvent, pack minimally, with a valise tough enough to be thrown onto a London pavement from a first- or second-floor window. Insist on hotel rooms no higher.”

— David Mitchell

165. “Yo! Amaba! A! Ese! Jodido! Perro!”

— David Mitchell

166. “Loneliness is an integral part of travelling. I used to think it was the downside to travelling, but now I realise it is a necessary educative part of it to be embraced.”

— David Mitchell

167. “Hate eats the hater the way ogres eat little boys.”

— David Mitchell

168. “Wars are never cured, they just go into remission for a few years.”

— David Mitchell

169. “British Airways: “No one is actually going to save the environment, so you might as well enjoy it while it lasts.”

— David Mitchell

170. “I really wish they hadn’t made the set out of asbestos.”

— David Mitchell

171. “Lunatics are writers whose works write them.”

— David Mitchell

172. “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

173. “The uncreated and the dead exist solely in our actual and virtual pasts.”

— David Mitchell

174. “The rain’s innumerable hooves spatter on the streets and roofs.”

— David Mitchell

175. “I can write pretty much anywhere.”

— David Mitchell

176. “In the 1970s and 1980s there was so little decent fiction for young people, but we’re now in a golden age that shows no sign of fading. Philip Pullman, J. K. Rowling, Lemony Snicket are only three of the best known among a good number of equals.”

— David Mitchell

177. “I added ‘writers’ to my list of people not to trust. They make everything up.”

— David Mitchell

178. “How lazily “xperts” dismiss what they fail to understand!”

— David Mitchell

179. “As long as our civilisation keeps trundling along generally forwards, then there is the possibility of a future where ethnicity is merely an interesting badge, not a uniform you can’t take off.”

— David Mitchell

180. “Write something every single day, even if it’s just three lines. And it doesn’t matter if it’s any good – just write something every day.”

— David Mitchell

181. “Human hunger birthed the Civlize, but human hunger killed it too.”

— David Mitchell

182. “So we surrender to stupidity, do we?” Freedom of speech is sacrificed at the altar of manufactured rage.”

— David Mitchell

183. “Words are what you fight with but what you fight about is whether or not you’re afraid of them.”

— David Mitchell

184. “I’ve become a less brave traveller since I became a dad, but in the past I was more foolhardy than brave.”

— David Mitchell

185. “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

186. “A novelist needs to know his own strong points and weak points.”

— David Mitchell

187. “This society doesn’t work without booze – our parties aren’t good enough, our conversations aren’t sufficiently interesting, nor is our self-confidence high enough to sustain our interactions without alcohol. It’s everywhere, lubricating everything.”

— David Mitchell

188. “Dead things show you what you’ll be too one day.”

— David Mitchell

189. “The song instantly insisted it’d never existed.”

— David Mitchell

190. “I think it’s natural for youth to be drawn to newness: The world is still new for them.”

— David Mitchell

191. “Birdsong foamed in the hour-before-dawn garden.”

— David Mitchell

192. “One’s ribs shouldn’t be prison bars.”

— David Mitchell

193. “I feel like something important has happened to meIs this possible?”

— David Mitchell

194. “I’m a novelist, that’s how I make my livelihood, and I concentrate on the novels.”

— David Mitchell

195. “Brainchild” is an odd word. You hear it a lot in explanatory voiceovers and I suppose I was trying to join in, but I don’t really like it. I’m not keen on the idea that my brain could have a child. Would it be made of brain – a child, made of grey brain, like a squelchy zombie? As metaphors for inspiration go, I prefer the lightbulb.”

— David Mitchell

196. “When watching the news, it’s so easy to forget what most of us are like: pleasant, polite, socially shy. We don’t want rows, we want a quiet life. We feel inadequate because we don’t protest and argue more – we don’t stand up for ourselves. And, in feeling that, we forget that the sort of people who do stand up for themselves are cut from the same cloth as the sort of people you have to stand up to.”

— David Mitchell

197. “For me, novels coalesce into being, rather than arrive fully formed.”

— David Mitchell

198. “I think the story is the most ancient form of human entertainment.”

— David Mitchell

199. “What women want is still what it’s always been: either you or, more likely, not you.”

— David Mitchell

200. “I still haven’t quite got used to eating live fish.”

— David Mitchell