A book can’t be a half-fantasy any more than a woman can be half pregnant

— David Mitchell

A book you finish reading is not the same book it was before you read it.

— David Mitchell

After ten pages I felt that Nietzsche was reading me, not I him.

— David Mitchell

After years of working with missionaries, I am tempted to conclude that their endeavors merely prolong a dying race's agonies for ten or twenty years. The merciful plowman shoots a trusty horse grown too old for service. As philanthropists, might it not be our duty to likewise ameliorate the savages' sufferings by hastening their extinction? Think of your Red Indians, Adam, think on the treaties you Americans abrogate & renege on, time & time & time again. More humane, surely & more honest, just to knock the savages on the head & get it over with?

— David Mitchell

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

— David Mitchell

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.

— David Mitchell

All the supernatural yarns need a realist explanation and a supernatural one.

— David Mitchell

Always, it is the poor people who pay. And always, it is the poor people's women who pay the most.

— David Mitchell

And grade every simile and metaphor from one star to five, and remove any threes or below. It hurts when you operate, but afterward you feel much better.

— David Mitchell

Anna would like you, he thinks, looking into her face. Anna would like you.

— David Mitchell