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" I don't have problems starting writing. I have problems stopping. I'm one of the last dads to arrive at school to collect the kids, because I want to get this paragraph just right. "
David Mitchell
Writing
Problems
Right
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" If the human condition were the periodic table, maybe love would be hydrogen at No. 1. Death would be helium at No. 2. Power, I reckon, would be where oxygen is. "
David Mitchell
Power
Love
Human
" When you're out of your own cultural context you have conversations with yourself that you just don't have at any other point in your life. When you're in a hotel room on the border between India and Nepal you can really discover things about yourself. "
David Mitchell
You
Own
Yourself
" There's been very little writing about speech impediments, even though it's this huge psychological barrier. "
David Mitchell
Little
Speech
Though
" Writers are so used to books being optioned and then the movie never happens. "
David Mitchell
Then
Happens
Books
" I love HBO productions, actually, like 'The Wire.' "
David Mitchell
Wire
Love
Like
" Many children are natural fantasists, I think, perhaps because their imaginations have yet to be clobbered into submission by experience. "
David Mitchell
Natural
Think
Children
" I rarely ever put my head above the rampart and see where this big lumbering behemoth called 'global literature' is going. "
David Mitchell
Literature
Above
See
" Any adaptation is a translation, and there is such a thing as an unreadably faithful translation; and I believe a degree of reinterpretation for the new language may be not only inevitable but desirable. "
David Mitchell
Believe
Only
I Believe
" I had a happy childhood. "
David Mitchell
Had
Happy
Happy Childhood
" There's a disease that young writers are susceptible to, which is, I will do this because I can - hubris, I suppose - without stopping to work out why. "
David Mitchell
I Can
Why
Will
" 'Y' is about the weakest letter of all. 'Y' can't make up its mind if it's a vowel or a consonant, can it? "
David Mitchell
Weakest
Up
Mind
" I often lose myself in the Sudoku-like challenges of making a book work. "
David Mitchell
Book
Myself
Work
" Every relationship has its own language. It takes a long time to evolve and read one another. Just as it's true for people, it's also true on a national or cultural level. "
David Mitchell
People
Relationship
Time
" When I was about 14, in about 1984, I decided to become a great poet. Faber & Faber was going to publish me, and when Ted Hughes read my first anthology he would invite me to Yorkshire for meat pies and mentorship. "
David Mitchell
First
Me
Meat
" As long as our civilisation keeps trundling along generally forwards, then there is the possibility of a future where ethnicity is merely an interesting badge, not a uniform you can't take off. "
David Mitchell
You
Future
Interesting
" Sometimes, comics will make the observation that it's not jokes that are funny, it's characters that are funny. And isn't that true! That's why I always kill jokes. I'm terrible at them, because I get the joke right, but I can't get the character right, and it just goes down like a lead balloon. "
David Mitchell
Balloon
Character
Down
" When I talk about my artist parents, people imagine a bohemian environment and think, 'Aha, so that's where he gets it from!' But we were as white, straight, and middle-class as the next family on our white, straight, middle-class housing estate. "
David Mitchell
Think
Parents
Family
" I think all writers of my age who are brought up on films probably by the age of 16 have seen many more films than they have read classics of literature. We can't help but be influenced by film. Film has got some great tricks that it's taught writers. "
David Mitchell
Got
Help
Literature
" False modesty can be worse than arrogance. "
David Mitchell
Modesty
Arrogance
False
" You can't be a part-time Richard Dawkins. "
David Mitchell
Part-Time
You
Richard
" I can't bear living in this huge beautiful world and not try to imitate it as best I can. "
David Mitchell
World
Living
I Can
" Perhaps all human interaction is about wanting and getting. "
David Mitchell
Getting
Wanting
Interaction
" Write something every single day, even if it's just three lines. And it doesn't matter if it's any good - just write something every day. "
David Mitchell
Every Day
Matter
Three
" I think the story is the most ancient form of human entertainment. "
David Mitchell
Entertainment
Most
Story
" My books are anti-absolutist and deeply distrustful of any religious stance that precludes the validity of any other. "
David Mitchell
Deeply
Stance
Religious
" In the 1970s and 1980s there was so little decent fiction for young people, but we're now in a golden age that shows no sign of fading. Philip Pullman, J. K. Rowling, Lemony Snicket are only three of the best known among a good number of equals. "
David Mitchell
Good
Age
Young
" Perhaps where text slides toward ambiguity, film inclines to specificity. A novel contains as many versions of itself as it has readers, whereas a film's final cut vaporizes every other way it might have been made. "
David Mitchell
Ambiguity
Been
Film
" I'm not a great deep political thinker. "
David Mitchell
Thinker
Political
Deep
" The state of childhood resonates with life inside a fantasy novel. If you have no control over how you spend large chunks of your day, or are at the mercy of flawed giant beings, then the desire to bend the laws of the world by magic is strong and deep. "
David Mitchell
Life
Childhood
Day
" The art of the novelist is not unrelated to the illness of multiple personality disorder. It's a much milder form. But the better the book, the nearer to the padded cell you are. "
David Mitchell
Art
Personality
Better