Top 500 David Mitchell Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “The wheel of seasons is broken, says the spring pattern this autumn day, and so am I.”

— David Mitchell

352. “I wonder what love feels like on the inside because externally it turns you into the King of Tit Mountain.”

— David Mitchell

353. “Listening’s reading if you close your eyes. Music’s a wood you walk through.”

— David Mitchell

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

— David Mitchell

355. “Life goes much more smoothly when everyone’s saying sorry. It’s the second most important social lubricant and, unlike the first, it doesn’t damage your liver.”

— David Mitchell

356. “Bury the hatchet. Hatchets don’t work on ghosts. They cannot hear you. You only end up hatcheting yourself.”

— David Mitchell

357. “Fatalism’s a weak antidepressant, but there’s nothing stronger at Dr. Kumar’s.”

— David Mitchell

358. “So who’s expired in an ending flat and inane quite beyond belief now?”

— David Mitchell

359. “How the consumers seethed to buy, buy, buy! Purebloods, it seemed, were a sponge of demand that sucked goods and services from every vendor, dinery, bar, shop, and nook.”

— David Mitchell

360. “When a parent dies, a filing cabinet full of all the fascinating stuff also ceases to exist.”

— David Mitchell

361. “Corpocracy is built on slavery, whether or not the word is sanctioned.”

— David Mitchell

362. “Rights are susceptible to subversion, as even granite is susceptible to erosion.”

— David Mitchell

363. “Remember that a sincere apology never diminishes the apologizer.”

— David Mitchell

364. “European music is passionately savage, broken by long silences.”

— David Mitchell

365. “Be that as it may, future ages will still be corpocratic ones. Corpocracy isn’t just another political system that will come and go – corpocracy is the natural order, in harmony with human nature.”

— David Mitchell

366. “Preacher, of all the world’s races, our love- or rather our rapacity-for treasure, gold, spices, and dominion, oh, most of all, sweet dominion, is the keenest, the hungriest, the most unscrupulous! This rapacity, yes, powers our Progress; for ends infernal of divine I know not. Nor do you know, sir. Nor do I overly care. I feel only gratitude that my maker cast me on the winning side.”

— David Mitchell

367. “What surer sign is there that the creative aquifers are dry than a writer creating a writer-character?”

— David Mitchell

368. “Dappled sunshine shivers.”

— David Mitchell

369. “The devil, Sixsmith, is in the pronouns.”

— David Mitchell

370. “Snow is bruised lilac in half-lite: such pure solace. You speak like an aesthete sometimes, Sonmi. Perhaps those deprived of beauty perceive it most instinctively. So.”

— David Mitchell

371. “The glances musicians exchange, when music is effortless, that was what he wanted from Milly, that intimacy.”

— David Mitchell

372. “People are icebergs, with just a bit you can see and loads you can’t.”

— David Mitchell

373. “No one else has lived this life.”

— David Mitchell

374. “I wish, he thinks, spoken words could be captured and kept in a locket.”

— David Mitchell

375. “A big fat zoo of snorers is snoring in all different rhythms.”

— David Mitchell

376. “She has four sons,” Nurse Purvis leads me on, “all with a London post code, but they never visit. You’d think old age was a criminal offense, not a destination we’re all heading to.” I consider airing my theory that our culture’s coping strategy towards death is to bury it under consumerism and Sansara, that the Riverside Villas of the world are screens that enable this self-deception, and that the elderly are guilty: guilty of proving to us that our willful myopia about death is exactly that.”

— David Mitchell

377. “The media – and not just The Washington Post – is where democracies conduct their civil wars.”

— David Mitchell

378. “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

379. “Forty minutes, times sixty seconds, that’s twenty-four thousand seconds to go.”

— David Mitchell

380. “Soul is a verb.”

— David Mitchell

381. “But Ed Brubeck’s a guy, like Vinny’s a guy, and guys are all sperm-guns.”

— David Mitchell

382. “Beauty is immune to definition.”

— David Mitchell

383. “Dr. Egret gives me the creeps. Never met a quack whom I didn’t half-suspect of plotting to do me in as expensively as he could contrive.”

— David Mitchell

384. “Ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only “right,” the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful.”

— David Mitchell

385. “The wisdom of skin is underappreciated.”

— David Mitchell

386. “Miguel tries to look jokey-penitent, but misses and looks like a man in white jeans who underestimates a spot of flatulence.”

— David Mitchell

387. “Time needs time to be measurable.”

— David Mitchell

388. “Adverbs are cholesterol in the veins of prose.”

— David Mitchell

389. “Betty says, ‘Frank, hey, Frank, lend this guy seventy dollars!”

— David Mitchell

390. “A young woman emerges from the next-door party and leans over the neighboring balcony.”

— David Mitchell

391. “Foolproof depends on the size of the fool.”

— David Mitchell

392. “Crazy people are hard work.”

— David Mitchell

393. “Do either of you know clock patience? You have to add cards up to fifteen?”

— David Mitchell

394. “Try this for deviancy: fabricants are mirrors held up to purebloods’ consciences; what purebloods see reflected there sickens them. So they blame you for holding up the mirror.”

— David Mitchell

395. “Oh, eerie’n’so beautsome’n’blue she was, my soul was achin’.”

— David Mitchell

396. “But the idea that you can no longer trust your mind, that’s just about the most frightening thing there is. When you mess around with proportion or symmetry, or when doubt is injected into your perception of the laws of physics, your mind ceases to be a refuge. Your mind is no longer a safe house.”

— David Mitchell

397. “How improbable must a coincidence be before it’s a sign?”

— David Mitchell

398. “Conduct your life in such a way that, when your train breaks down in the eve of your years, you have a warm, dry car driven by a loved one – or a hired one, it matters not – to take you home.”

— David Mitchell

399. “No one’s ever very sure if doves and pigeons are the same bird or not.”

— David Mitchell

400. “His skin’s so tanned he could be Turkish or something.”

— David Mitchell