{"author":"David Mitchell","author_id":"David+Mitchell","total_quotes":220,"quotes":[{"text":"The truth of a myth, your Honor, is not its words but its patterns.","author":"David Mitchell","tags":["myth","patterns","truth","words"],"id":855,"author_id":"David+Mitchell"},{"text":"Our ancestors built temples for their gods. We build department stores.","author":"David Mitchell","tags":["truth"],"id":5113,"author_id":"David+Mitchell"},{"text":"Been thinking of my grandfather, whose wayward brilliance skipped my father’s generation. Once, he showed me an aquatint of a certain Siamese temple. Don’t recall its name, but ever since a disciple of the Buddha preached on the spot centuries ago, every bandit king, tyrant, and monarch of that kingdom has enhanced it with marble towers, scented arboretums, gold-leafed domes, lavished murals on its vaulted ceilings, set emeralds into the eyes of its statuettes. When the temple finally equals its counterpart in the Pure Land, so the story goes, that day humanity shall have fulfilled its purpose, and Time itself shall come to an end.To men like Ayrs, it occurs to me, this temple is civilization. The masses, slaves, peasants, and foot soldiers exist in the cracks of its flagstones, ignorant even of their ignorance. Not so the great statesmen, scientists, artists, and most of all, the composers of the age, any age, who are civilization’s architects, masons, and priests. Ayrs sees our role is to make civilization ever more resplendent. My employer’s profoundest, or only, wish is to create a minaret that inheritors of Progress a thousand years from now will point to and say, “Look, there is Vyvyan Ayrs!”How vulgar, this hankering after immortality, how vain, how false. Composers are merely scribblers of cave paintings. One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn’t, the wolves and blizzards would be at one’s throat all the sooner.","author":"David Mitchell","tags":["civilization","composer","immortality","music"],"id":6329,"author_id":"David+Mitchell"},{"text":"…It's as if they actually think that what other people think of them somehow doesn't matter. I mean, I know we're all supposed to believe that, but obviously, none of us actually do. And nor should we, because it does! It does matter! And the people who genuinely believe it doesn't tend to be the very people who ought to care most what other people think of them, because what the other people are thinking is, 'No, actually, I don't think the Chinese are 'up to something,'' or, 'You should use mouthwash,' or, 'Your mania for the collective socialization of agriculture will surely cause the deaths of millions,' or, 'Forty cats is too many cats.","author":"David Mitchell","tags":["confidence","judgement","judgment","motivational"],"id":7969,"author_id":"David+Mitchell"},{"text":"The body is the outermost layer of the mind.","author":"David Mitchell","tags":["body","mind"],"id":8628,"author_id":"David+Mitchell"},{"text":"If losers can exploit what their adversaries teach them, yes, losers can become winners in the long term.","author":"David Mitchell","tags":["inspirational","interesting","losing","perspectives","thoughtful","winning"],"id":9463,"author_id":"David+Mitchell"},{"text":"Sometimes John had recorded new compositions, or lines from his new poems. Sometimes he'd just record a busy night in The Green Man. Sometimes sheep, seals, skylarks, the wind turbine. If Liam were home there would be some Liam. The summer fair. The Fastnet Race. I would unfold my map of Clear Island. Those tapes prised the lid off homesickness and rattled out the contents, but always at the bottom was solace.","author":"David Mitchell","tags":["family","homesickness","solace"],"id":10614,"author_id":"David+Mitchell"},{"text":"Pretending”,' she looked at the garden, 'is not the truth.''But you said two true things, right ? One, you hate this girl. Two, you want her to feel better. If you decide that the wanting truth's more important than the hating truth, just tell her you've forgiven her, even if you haven't. At least she'd feel better. Maybe that'd make you feel better too.'Madame Crommelynck studied her hands, moodily, both sides. 'Sophistry', she pronounced. I'm not sure what 'sophistry' means so I kept shtum.","author":"David Mitchell","tags":["forgiveness","human-relations","maturity"],"id":11723,"author_id":"David+Mitchell"},{"text":"Always, it is the poor people who pay. And always, it is the poor people's women who pay the most.","author":"David Mitchell","tags":["class-struggle","war","women"],"id":12586,"author_id":"David+Mitchell"},{"text":"Trees, their incremental gymnastics and noisy silence, are another wonder of Outside to me.","author":"David Mitchell","tags":["trees"],"id":12761,"author_id":"David+Mitchell"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":220,"pages":22,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}