Quotes from Ghostwritten

“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, quote from Ghostwritten

“I am going to tell you a secret. Everything is about wanting. Everything. Things happen because of people wanting. Watch closely, and you’ll see what I mean.”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“Memories are their own descendents masquerading as the ancestors of the present.”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“The human world is made of stories, not people. The people the stories use to tell themselves are not to be blamed”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“A weapon men use against women is the refusal to take them seriously.”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“Little girls are like old cats. If they don't like you nothing on Earth will make them pretend to.”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“The act of memory is an act of ghostwriting.”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“Folks with most to complain about seldom complain most.”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“Italians give their city sexes, and they all agree that the sex for a particular city is quite correct, but none of them can explain why. I love that. London's middle-aged and male, respectably married but secretly gay.”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“If you’re in your life, chance. Viewed from the outside, like a book you’re reading, it’s fate all the way.”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“The her that lived in her looked out through her eyes, through my eyes, and at the me that lives in me.”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“You have to know someone intimately to be able to love them. So love at first sight is a contradiction in terms. Unless in that first sight there's some sort of mystical gigabyte downloading of information from one mind into the other.”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“There are so many cities in every single city.”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“How about this? Hong Kong had been appropriated by British drug pushers in the 1840s. We wanted Chinese silk, porcelain, and spices. The Chinese didn't want our clothes, tools, or salted herring, and who can blame them? They had no demand. Our solution was to make a demand, by getting large sections of the populace addicted to opium, a drug which the Chinese government had outlawed. When the Chinese understandably objected to this arrangement, we kicked the fuck out of them, set up a puppet government in Peking that hung signs on parks saying NO DOGS OR CHINESE, and occupied this corner of their country as an import base. Fucking godawful behavior, when you think about it. And we accuse them of xenophobia. It would be like the Colombians invading Washington in the early twenty-first century and forcing the White House to legalize heroin. And saying, "Don't worry, we'll show ourselves out, and take Florida while we're at it, okay? Thanks very much.”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“I pass through many Me's in the course of my day, each one selfish with his time. The Lying-in-Bed me and the Enjoying-the-Hot-Shower Me are particularly selfish. The Late Me loathes the pair of them.”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“Have you noticed," said John, "how countries call theirs 'sovereign nuclear deterrents,' but call the other countries' ones 'weapons of mass destruction'?”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“I added 'writers' to my list of people not to trust. They make everything up.”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“Always, it is the poor people who pay. And always, it is the poor people's women who pay the most.”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“We all think we're in control of our own lives, but really they're pre-ghostwritten by forces around us.”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“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, quote from Ghostwritten

“Access to memories does not guarantee access to truth.”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“The silences after his last gasp were sung together by a blackbird. I lay there, my eyes unable to close. His were unable to open. I listed the places where I hurt, and how much. My loins felt ripped. Something inside had torn. There were seven places on my body where he had sunk his fangs into my skin and bitten. He'd dug his nails into my neck, and twisted my head to one side, and clawed my face. I hadn't made a noise. He had made all the noise for both of us. Had it hurt him?”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“Taro taught me that people respect spirit, but even cowards don't respect cowards.”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“Humans live in a pit of cheating, exploiting, hurting, incarcerating. Every time, the species wastes some part of what it could be. This waste is poisonous.”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“Sometimes language can't even read the music of meaning.”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“Who was blowing on the nape of my neck.”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“Two old people in a room devoid of furniture, steam rising from their teacups. They were motionless and expressionless. Waiting for something. I wish I could go into their room and sit down with them. I'd give them my Rolex for that. I wish they would smile, and pour me a cup of jasmine tea. I wish the world was like that.”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“London is a language. I guess all places are.”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

“It was a morning for Ella Fitzgerald. There are fine things in the world, after all. Dignity, refinement, warmth and humour, where you'd never expect to find them. Even as an old woman, an amputee in a wheelchair, Ella sang like a girl who could still be at high school, falling in love for the first time".”
― David Mitchell, quote from Ghostwritten

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“Barrons stood inside the front door, dripping cool old-world elegance.
I hadn’t heard him come in over the music. He was leaning, shoulder against the wall, arms folded, watching me.
“ ‘One eye is taken for an eye . . .’ ” I trailed off, deflating. I didn’t need a mirror to know how stupid I looked. I regarded him sourly for a moment, then moved for the sound dock to turn it off. When I heard a choked sound behind me I spun, and shot him a hostile glare.
He wore his usual expression of arrogance and boredom. I resumed my path for the sound dock, and heard it again. This time when I turned back, the corners of his mouth were twitching. I stared at him until they stopped.
I’d reached the sound dock, and just turned it off, when he exploded.
I whirled. “I didn’t look that funny,” I snapped.
His shoulders shook.
“Oh, come on! Stop it!”
He cleared his throat and stopped laughing. Then his gaze took a quick dart upward, fixed on my blazing MacHalo, and he lost it again. I don’t know, maybe it was the brackets sticking out from the sides. Or maybe I should have gotten a black bike helmet,
not a hot pink one.
I unfastened it and yanked it off my head. I stomped over to the door, flipped the interior lights back on, slammed him in the chest with my brilliant invention, and stomped upstairs.
“You’d better have stopped laughing by the time I come back down,” I shouted over my shoulder.
I wasn’t sure he even heard me, he was laughing so hard.”
― Karen Marie Moning, quote from Faefever

“Hard it is to suffer through stupid people. They make you feel sorry for them, and if your sorrow is as great as your hurt, you will allow them to go free of punishment, for their eyes are the eyes of dogs that have done wrong and know it, and are afraid.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

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