Top 500 David Mitchell Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an’ tho’ a cloud’s shape nor hue nor size don’t stay the same, it’s still a cloud an’ so is a soul. Who can say where the cloud’s blowed from or who the soul’ll be ‘morrow? Only Sonmi the east an’ the west an’ the compass an’ the atlas, yay, only the atlas o’ clouds.”

— David Mitchell

252. “The secret of happiness is to ignore your reflection in mirrors once you’re over forty.”

— David Mitchell

253. “If people praise you, you’re not walking your own path.”

— David Mitchell

254. “Our level of expectation is crucial to our enjoyment of food, wine, holidays, plays, films and TV shows. We flatter ourselves that we’re objective but our judgments are clouded by our hopes, by whether something was better or worse than we’d anticipated.”

— David Mitchell

255. “Does death always make you so verbose?” Luisa’s voice trembles. “What do you mean ‘always’?”

— David Mitchell

256. “Love’s a dictator. I know this, yet the blast furnace in my ribcage roars You You You You You You just the same, and there’s bugger-all I can do about it.”

— David Mitchell

257. “Probably” is a word with an emergency ejector seat.”

— David Mitchell

258. “Laughter is an anarchic blasphemy. Tyrants are wise to fear it.”

— David Mitchell

259. “The conflict between corporations and activists is that of narcolepsy versus remembrance. The corporations have money, power, and influence. Our weapon is public outrate.”

— David Mitchell

260. “I wonder if you encountered this dictum first spoken by a twentieth-century statesman: “An abyss cannot be crossed in two steps.”

— David Mitchell

261. “Every generation must lose its innocence, must see the brightly painted nursery wall smashed away by the wrecking ball of betrayal to reveal a blighted landscape. For our predecessors, it was the Somme, the Great Depression, the Holocaust or Vietnam; for my generation, it was The Phantom Menace.”

— David Mitchell

262. “Anything is true if enough people believe it is.”

— David Mitchell

263. “It is a gift from your ancestors and a loan from your descendants.”

— David Mitchell

264. “Such inbred, bovine torpor!”

— David Mitchell

265. “You said you could find an obscure recording for me by Robert Frobisher, Cloud Atlas Sextet.”

— David Mitchell

266. “Robert Frobisher mentions a comet-shaped birthmark between his shoulder blade and collarbone.”

— David Mitchell

267. “This, explained the angel, is hell. The people do not love each other. They only want to feed themselves.”

— David Mitchell

268. “Belief is both prize and battlefield, within the mind and in the mind’s mirror, the world. If we believe humanity is a ladder of tribes, a colosseum of confrontation, exploitation, and bestiality, such a humanity is surely brought into being.”

— David Mitchell

269. “Thunder splits the rift where the Sun floods in.”

— David Mitchell

270. “Fantasy. Lunacy. All revolutions are, until they happen, then they are historical inevitabilites.”

— David Mitchell

271. “Us elderly are the modern lepers.”

— David Mitchell

272. “I put ten sugar cubes in my coffee. I drank it through my tongue, and my blood sang like the Archangel Gabriel as the sugar flooded in. That can’t be natural.”

— David Mitchell

273. “If academic endeavour had always been vetted in advance for practicality, we wouldn’t have the aeroplane or the iPhone, just a better mammoth trap.”

— David Mitchell

274. “A wise man does not step betwixt the beast and his meat.”

— David Mitchell

275. “A Highlander spoke softly: “Aye, laddie. We’ll nort let ye doone.”

— David Mitchell

276. “The mystery o’ fishing’s this,’ said Dean’s dad, ‘what’s the hook, who’s got the rod, what’s the maggot, what’s the fish?’ ‘Why’s that a mystery, Dad?’ ‘Yer’ll understand when yer older.’ ‘But ain’t it obvious what’s what?’ ‘It changes, son. In a heartbeat.”

— David Mitchell

277. “I heard a miaow nearby and looked down to see a moon-grey cat melting out of the shadows.”

— David Mitchell

278. “The lie that happiness is about borrowing money you haven’t got to buy crap you don’t need,” says Ian. “The lie that we live in a democratic state. And the most weaselly lie of all, that there is no class war.”

— David Mitchell

279. “Hobbies are for pleasure, but rituals keep you going.”

— David Mitchell

280. “Gardener made a bonfire of fallen leaves – just came in from it. The heat on one’s face and hands, the sad smoke, the crackling and wheezing fire. Reminds me of the groundsman’s hut at Gresham. Anyway, got a gorgeous passage from the fire – percussion for crackling, alto bassoon for the wood, and a restless flute for the flames.”

— David Mitchell

281. “One of the reasons I’d been attracted to showbusiness in the first place was that I thought, most of my experience so far having been of the theatre, that it was a profession that ring-fenced the lie-in. I didn’t mind the idea of working in the evenings, maybe of rehearsing in the afternoons, but mornings, I felt, should be the preserve of sleep, tea and paracetamol. So the realisation that television, the medium I most wanted to work in, required such punishing early starts was a bitter blow.”

— David Mitchell

282. “Glass half empty, glass half full, glass too small?”

— David Mitchell

283. “But reality creeps in wherever you live, however pretty the flowers are, however blue the sky, however great the parties. The only people who actually live in dreams are people in comas.”

— David Mitchell

284. “Sunrise bright as a silver dollar.”

— David Mitchell

285. “Cowardice is nothing to do with it – suicide 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.”

— David Mitchell

286. “We’re in touch with the zeitgeist, but are too down-to-earth to be impressed. Who doesn’t want to come across like that?”

— David Mitchell

287. “Okay, so she’s mad as a sack of ferrets. Only I don’t tell her so ’cause I’d like more of that green tea.”

— David Mitchell

288. “With a story, as with a well-chosen gift, we’re happiest when surprised by something we didn’t know we wanted.”

— David Mitchell

289. “Remember: What Cupid gives, Cupid takes away.”

— David Mitchell

290. “Jealous and sweet, this music was, sobbing and gorgeous, muddy and crystal. But if the right words existed the music wouldn’t need to.”

— David Mitchell

291. “Why have you given your life to books, TC? Dull, dull, dull! The memoirs are bad enough, but all that ruddy fiction! Hero goes on a journey, stranger comes to town, somebody wants something, they get it or they don’t, will is pitted against will. “Admire me, for I am a metaphor.”

— David Mitchell

292. “Hate smells of burnt dead fireworks.”

— David Mitchell

293. “What separates us from the beasts, apart from fire, laughter, depression and guilt about killing the odd beast, is our curiosity. We’ve advanced as a species because we’ve wanted to find things out, regardless of whether we thought it useful. We looked at the sky and wondered what was going on.”

— David Mitchell

294. “People are masks, with masks under those masks, and masks under those, and down you go.”

— David Mitchell

295. “I light up, fumigate my alveolar sacs and think dark thoughts.”

— David Mitchell

296. “The impossible is negotiable. What is possible is malleable.”

— David Mitchell

297. “De wereld is al wankel genoeg.”

— David Mitchell

298. “Attaining immortality is easier than controlling its terms and conditions.”

— David Mitchell

299. “It’s a classy Victorian pub with brass fittings, upholstered chair backs, and NO SPITTING signs.”

— David Mitchell

300. “Those there English gerrrrunts are trampling o’er ma God-gi’en rrraights! Theeve used me an’ ma pals morst direly an’ we’re inneed of a wee assistance.”

— David Mitchell