David Mitchell

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

It's a very special talent that men have, to possess seeing eyes yet be so blind.

A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.

Here__ the truth: Who is spared love is spared grief.

Grief is an amputation, but hope is incurable haemophilia: you bleed and bleed and bleed.

I'd love to know how Dad saw me when I was 6. I'd love to know a hundred things. When a parent dies, a filing cabinet full of all the fascinating stuff also ceases to exist. I never imagined how hungry I'd be one day to look inside it.

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.

Prayer may be a placebo for the disease of helplessness, but placebos can make you feel better.

You say you're 'depressed' - all i see is resilience. You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn't mean you're defective - it just means you're human.

Words are what you fight with but what you fight about is whether or not you__e afraid of them.

I wish, he thinks, spoken words could be captured and kept in a locket.

The truth of a myth, your Honor, is not its words but its patterns.

The art teacher's scarlet book was called Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille. 'As the title suggests,' Mr Dunwoody saw the book'd caught my attention, 'it's about the history of opticians. What are you about?

But you have read Madame Bovary?' (I'd never heard of her books.) 'No.

Scholars discern motions of history & formulate these motions into rules that govern the rises & falls of civilizations. My belief runs contrary, however. To wit: history admits no rules, only outcomes. What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts and virtuous acts. What precipitates acts? Belief.

So little is actually worthy of belief or disbelief. Better to strive to coexist than seek to disapprove . . .

The library refused many downloads, of course, but I succeeded with two Optimists translated from the Late English, Orwell and Huxley;

The Future,_ says Ian, in a film-trailer voice. __oming soon, to a Present near you.