“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
David Mitchell
Born place: in Southport, The United Kingdom
Born date January 12, 1969
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“...every day in every life is of the most profound importance.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from From the Corner of His Eye
“In the original form of the word, to worry someone else was to harass, strangle, or choke them. Likewise, to worry oneself is a form of self-harassment. To give it less of a role in our lives, we must understand what it really it is. Worry is the fear we manufacture—it is not authentic. If you choose to worry about something, have at it, but do so knowing it’s a choice. Most often, we worry because it provides some secondary reward. There are many variations, but a few of the most popular follow. Worry is a way to avoid change; when we worry, we don’t do anything about the matter. Worry is a way to avoid admitting powerlessness over something, since worry feels like we’re doing something. (Prayer also makes us feel like we’re doing something, and even the most committed agnostic will admit that prayer is more productive than worry.) Worry is a cloying way to have connection with others, the idea being that to worry about someone shows love. The other side of this is the belief that not worrying about someone means you don’t care about them. As many worried-about people will tell you, worry is a poor substitute for love or for taking loving action. Worry is a protection against future disappointment. After taking an important test, for example, a student might worry about whether he failed. If he can feel the experience of failure now, rehearse it, so to speak, by worrying about it, then failing won’t feel as bad when it happens. But there’s an interesting trade-off: Since he can’t do anything about it at this point anyway, would he rather spend two days worrying and then learn he failed, or spend those same two days not worrying, and then learn he failed? Perhaps most importantly, would he want to learn he had passed the test and spent two days of anxiety for nothing? In Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman concludes that worrying is a sort of “magical amulet” which some people feel wards off danger. They believe that worrying about something will stop it from happening. He also correctly notes that most of what people worry about has a low probability of occurring, because we tend to take action about those things we feel are likely to occur. This means that very often the mere fact that you are worrying about something is a predictor that it isn’t likely to happen!”
― Gavin de Becker, quote from The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence
“Anyway, that's what life is, just one learning experience after another, and when you're through with all the learning experiences you graduate and what you get for a diploma is, you die.”
― Frederik Pohl, quote from Gateway
“Great! I've written something stupid, but I haven't signed a contract with anyone to produce solely wise and perfect works. I gave vent to my stupidity...and here I am, reborn.”
― Witold Gombrowicz, quote from Ferdydurke
“When I've seen you go into an empty room I've sometimes wanted to open the door suddenly, but I've been afraid to in case I found nobody there.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, quote from Theatre
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QuicksandBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
