David Mitchell

People knelt in prayer, some moving their lips. Envy 'em, really I do. I envy God, too, privy to their secrets. Faith, the least exclusive club on Earth, has the craftiest doorman. Every time I've stepped through its wide-open doorway, I find myself stepping out on the street.

Did I ever lie to get my story? Ten-mile-high whoppers every day before breakfast, if it got me one inch closer to the truth

As many truths as men. Occasionally, I glimpse a truer Truth, hiding in imperfect simulacrums of itself, but as I approach, it bestirs itself & moves deeper into the thorny swamp of dissent.

"Try this for deviancy: fabricants are mirrors held up to purebloods' consciences; what purebloods see reflected there sickens them. So they blame you for holding up the mirror."

I hid my shock by asking when purebloods might blame themselves.

Mephi replied, "History suggests, not until they are made to."

...the dizzying vividness of the images of places and people that the letters have unlocked. Images so vivid she can only call them memories.

Whoever opined "Money can't buy you happiness" obviously had far too much of the stuff.

No organist played a Magnificat but the wind in the flue chimney, no choir sang a Nunc Dimittis but the withering gulls, yet I fancy the Creator was not displeazed.

List'n, savages an Civ'lizeds ain't divvied by tribes or b'liefs or mountain ranges, nay, ev'ry human is both, yay. Old Uns'd got the Smart o' gods but the savagery o' jackals, an' that's what tripped the Fall. Some Savages what I knowed got a beautsome Civ'lized heart beatin' in their ribs. Maybe some Kona. Not 'nuff to sayso their hole tribe, but who knows one day? One day.

"One day" was only a flea o' hope for us.

Yay, I mem'ry Meronym sayin', but fleas ain't easy to rid.

I watched clouds awobbly from the floor o' that kayak. Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an' tho' a cloud's shape nor hue nor size don't stay the same, it's still a cloud an' so is a soul. Who can say where the cloud's blowed from or who the soul'll be 'morrow? Only Sonmi the east an' the compass an' the atlas, yay, only the atlas o' clouds.

[...] If losers can xploit what their adversaries teach them, yes, losers can become winners in the long term.

[...] Smart'n'Civ'lize ain't nothin' to do with the color o' the skin, nay.

That love loves fidelity [...] is a myth woven by men from their insecurities.