"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."

Metaphor, Love, Death, Power, Comparison

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"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."

Explore more quotes by David Mitchell

"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."

Society, Humanity, Corruption, Exploitation, Ethics

"There're times when i suspect that the mind has a mind of its own. it shows us pictures. pictures of the past and the might-one-day-be. this mind's mind exerts its own will, too, and has its own voice."

Mind, Thought, Memory, Future

"Your leaders must know powerful magic. Yes, said one of the women. The magic is called Marx, Stalin, Lenin and Class Dialectics. It didn't sound like very powerful magic to me."

Politics, Power, Leadership, Ideology

"The empowered may serve justice, remodel the Earth, transform lush nations into smoking battlefields, and bring down skyscrapers, but power itself is amoral."

Power, Justice, Change, Strength

"She was widely read enough to appreciate my literary wit but not so widely read that she knew my sources. I like that in a woman."

Literature, Wit, Reading, Humor

"This is my moral. Trust what you dream. Not what you think."

Faith, Trust, Dream, Mind

"Rights are susceptible to subversion, as even granite is susceptible to erosion. My fifth Declaration posits how, in a cycle as old as tribalism, ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only "rights, the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful."

Justice, Rights, Power, Violence, Fear

"One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn't, the wolves and blizzards will be at one's throat all the sooner."

Art, Music, Winter, Nature

"Glass & peace alike betray proof of fragility under repeated blows."

Reality, Sensitivity, Peace, Life, Resilience

"The novelist is more like a pregnant woman who delivers her own child unaided. A messy procedure, with lots of groaning."

Creativity, Creation, Art, Writing, Life

Exlpore more Metaphor quotes

"Life is nether food nor drink. But the faith of a dance dream."

Lailah Gifty Akita, Ghanaian Author

Metaphor, Food, Faith, Dance, Dream

"If lighthouse becomes a burning candle, flickered upon ocean's insanity.Your sailing heart there anchors to handle the obsessed breeze towards sand dune's vanity."

Munia Khan, Bangladeshi Poet

Metaphor, Ocean, Insanity, Heart, Vanity

"We have the St. Vitus' dance, and cannot possibly keep our heads still."

Henry David Thoreau, American Author

Metaphor, Body, Mind, Energy, Disease

"Whatever may be their use in civilized societies, mirrors are essential to all violent and heroic action."

Virginia Woolf, British Author

Metaphor, Heroism, Violence, Reflection, Symbolism

"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."

David Mitchell, British Novelist

Metaphor, Love, Death, Power, Comparison

"Let us play hide and seek in a mountain which is like a women's back."

Santosh Kalwar, Nepalese Poet

Metaphor, Nature, Playfulness, Symbolism

"There was once a time when darkness shrouded the world, and the darkness had a queen."

Marie Lu, American Author

Metaphor, Darkness, Power, Fear, Control

"There are people among us who are biologically human but who are androids in the metaphoric sense."

Philip K. Dick, American Writer

Metaphor, Humanity, Identity, Emotion

"People who are unable to stand within the dark places of life, those who are always running towards their happy places, are the same things as candles without flames. There is no worth in a candle without a flame, and we only add the flame when there is darkness. Without darkness, there would be no need for warriors and angels. Warriors are not made because the whole world is happy and angels were not formed because there are no demons. Be of worth, have a flame."

C. JoyBell C., American Author

Metaphor, Darkness, Light, Worth, Values

"Again, one of the problems I have with television, as I mentioned before, is it's trivial in many ways, and I think that a lot of folks out there are looking for new metaphors and new ways of thinking about things."

J. Michael Straczynski, American Producer

Metaphor, Metaphors, Problems, Television, Thinking