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" I'm from a time and place where bigheadedness was a really savage crime, and you'd get cut down for it by your peers and parents. "
David Mitchell
Time
You
Parents
Related Quotes:
" False modesty can be worse than arrogance. "
David Mitchell
Modesty
Arrogance
False
" Japanese food makes me feel particularly good. "
David Mitchell
Makes
Food
Feel
" I think words operate like musical notes that the eyeball hears. "
David Mitchell
Notes
Like
I Think
" I think we think in terms of stories. "
David Mitchell
Terms
Think
Stories
" For me, novels coalesce into being, rather than arrive fully formed. "
David Mitchell
Rather
Arrive
Being
" 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
" 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 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
" I often lose myself in the Sudoku-like challenges of making a book work. "
David Mitchell
Book
Myself
Work
" I love HBO productions, actually, like 'The Wire.' "
David Mitchell
Wire
Love
Like
" The words 'maybe' and 'perhaps' are literally the same - the flavor is the same, the educational level is the same. But you just know when to use maybe and when to use perhaps. I think it's because of this: You get to know the tastes or musical tastes of words themselves, and this informs your choice, whether you use them or not. "
David Mitchell
Choice
You
Words
" 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
" 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
" 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
" I'm not a great deep political thinker. "
David Mitchell
Thinker
Political
Deep
" 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
" '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
" Perhaps all human interaction is about wanting and getting. "
David Mitchell
Getting
Wanting
Interaction
" When I think about it, I'm happily bewildered that people will preorder my books They'll preorder me. What a lucky guy! "
David Mitchell
Will
Me
People
" Writing is probably one-fifth coming up with the stuff, and four-fifths self-editing again and again and again. "
David Mitchell
Up
Writing
Stuff
" Writers are so used to books being optioned and then the movie never happens. "
David Mitchell
Then
Happens
Books
" 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
" 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
" I think the story is the most ancient form of human entertainment. "
David Mitchell
Entertainment
Most
Story
" 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
" There's been very little writing about speech impediments, even though it's this huge psychological barrier. "
David Mitchell
Little
Speech
Though
" I'm certainly a plot and character man. Themes, structure, style - they're valid components of a novel and you can't complete the book without them. But I think what propels me as a reader is plot and character. "
David Mitchell
Book
Style
Me
" 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
" A novelist needs to know his own strong points and weak points. "
David Mitchell
Points
Weak
Know
" 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