David Mitchell Quotes & Sayings

“False modesty can be worse than arrogance.”

“I rarely ever put my head above the rampart and see where this big lumbering behemoth called 'global literature' is going.”

“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.”

“The art of the novelist is not unrelated to the illness of multiple personality disorder. It's a much milder form. But the better the book, the nearer to the padded cell you are.”

“Writing is probably one-fifth coming up with the stuff, and four-fifths self-editing again and again and again.”

“A life can get knocked into a new orbit by a car crash, a lottery win or just a bleary-eyed consultant giving bad news in a calm voice.”

“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.”

“If the human condition were the periodic table, maybe love would be hydrogen at No. 1. Death would be helium at No. 2. Power, I reckon, would be where oxygen is.”

“Sometimes I think that creativity is a matter of seeing, or stumbling over, unobvious similarities between things - like composing a fresh metaphor, but on a more complex scale.”

“I can't bear living in this huge beautiful world and not try to imitate it as best I can.”