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"But you have read Madame Bovary?' (I'd never heard of her books.) 'No."
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"The lot of the brideto be wed before beddesired until rotten.The lot of the authorto be read before bedadmired then forgotten."

"An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better."

"It is usually unbearably painful to read a book by an author who knows way less than you do, unless the book is a novel."

"Rain's pouring and it's too cold. All people bored and I even accord What to do but spell a tale told: So once upon a time a land in the shore..."

"The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper whether little or great, it belongs to Literature."

"Every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and the soul of those who read it and dream about it."

"Not that length and weight alone indicate excellence, many epic tales are pretty much epic crap."

"Tolkien did admit that, 'As a guide, I had only my own feelings for what is appealing or moving.' In other words ~ he wrote about what interested him ~ and despite his protestation of including anything allegorical into his tale, Catholic history and mystic prophecy obviously received its fair share of attention ..."

"I found it hard to think of leaving my books. They had been my elevators out of the midden, and to whom could I entrust such close friends?"

"I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most."
Explore more quotes by David Mitchell

"Belief, like fear or love, is a force to be understood as we understand the theory of relativity and principals of uncertainty. Phenomena that determine the course of our lives. Yesterday, my life was headed in one direction. Today, it is headed in another. Yesterday, I believe I would never have done what I did today. These forces that often remake time and space, that can shape and alter who weimagine ourselves to be, begin long before we are born and continue after we perish. Our lives and our choices, like quantum trajectories, are understood moment to moment. That each point of intersection, each encounter, suggest a new potential direction. Proposition, I have fallen in love with Luisa Rey. Is this possible? I just met her and yet, I feel like something important has happened to me."

"Disco's are tricky. You look a total wally if you dance too early but after one crucial song tips the disco over, you look a sad saddo if you don't."

"Perfume counters in department stores, Holly Deblin smells of, the middle of July, and cinnamon Tic Tacs."

"The downside is the fear.The fear of something happening to her, the pressure of there being two bodies in the world that I want to keep from harm and only being able to watchfully inhabit one of them. I wonder if you know what I mean.I hope you do for your sake."

"Holly rubs her temples. "Are we talking ... vampires?Arkady groans. "On, the V-word! Here it comes again."

"Photos're better than nothing, but things're better than photos 'cause the things themselves were part of what was there."

"I lost my balance when the train pulled away, but a human crumple zone buffered my fall. We stayed like that, half fallen. Diagonal People."

"As an experienced editor, I disapprove of flashbacks, foreshadowings, and tricksy devices; they belong in the 1980s with M.A.s in postmodernism and chaos theory."
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