David Mitchell

"And if you threaten my reputation, oh well, I'll have to ruin yours!"

I hear my father-in-law's response[...] "Naïve, dreaming Adam. He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!"

Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?

Books don't offer real escape but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.

Many xpert witnesses at. our trial denied Declarations could be the work of a fabricant, ascended or otherwise, and maintained it was ghosted by Union or a pureblood Abolitionst.

How lazily "xperts" dismiss what they fail to understand!

Once any tyranny becomes accepted as ordinary, according to Veronica, its victory is assured.

"Now you just look here, you grebo, you can go shag your bloody sporran if you think—" One of his teeth splashed into my Kilmagoon, fifteen feet away. (I fished the tooth out to keep as proof of this unlikely claim, otherwise no one will ever believe me.)

The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming + ever more problematic to access + reconstruct: in contrast, the virtual past is malleable, ever-brightening + ever more difficult to circumvent/expose as fraudulent.

The present presses the virtual past into its own service, to lend credence to its mythologies + legitimacy to the imposition of will.

Whoever said money can't buy you happiness[...] obviously didn't have enough of the stuff.

Memories refused to fit, or fitted but came unglued. Even months later, how would I know if some major tranche of myself remained lost?

"[...]The corporation is the future. We need to let business run the country and establish a true meritocracy."

"Not choked by welfare, unions, 'affirmative action' for amputee transvestite colored homeless arachnophobes..."

"A meritocracy of acumen. A culture that is not ashamed to acknowledge that wealth attracts power..."

"... and that the wealthmakers—us—are rewarded. When a man aspires to power, I ask one simple question: 'Does he think like a businessman?'"

Luisa rolls her napkin into a compact ball. "I ask three simple questions. How did he get that power? How is he using it? And how can it be taken off the sonofabitch?"

[...] of all the world's races, our love—or rather our rapacity—for treasure, gold, spices & dominion, oh, most of all, sweet dominion, is the keenest, the hungriest, the most unscrupulous! This rapacity, yes, powers, our Progress; for ends infernal or divine I know not. Nor do you know, sir. Nor do I overly care. I feel only gratitude that my Maker cast me on the winning side.

Judith Rey watches the young woman. Once upon a time, I had a baby daughter. I dressed her in frilly frocks, enrolled her for ballet classes, and sent her to horse-riding camp five summers in a row. But look at her. She turned into Lester anyway.