Cloud Atlas Quotes

“My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Travel far enough, you meet yourself.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“I believe there is another world waiting for us. A better world. And I'll be waiting for you there.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“You say you're 'depressed' - all i see is resilience. You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn't mean you're defective - it just means you're human.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Fantasy. Lunacy.
All revolutions are, until they happen, then they are historical inevitabilities.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“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 west an' the compass an' the atlas, yay, only the atlas o' clouds.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“...there ain't no journey what don't change you some.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Truth is singular. Its 'versions' are mistruths.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Belief, like fear or love, is a force to be understood as we understand the theory of relativity and principals of uncertainty. Phenomena that determine the course of our lives. Yesterday, my life was headed in one direction. Today, it is headed in another. Yesterday, I believe I would never have done what I did today. These forces that often remake time and space, that can shape and alter who we
imagine ourselves to be, begin long before we are born and continue after we perish. Our lives and our choices, like quantum trajectories, are understood moment to moment. That each point of intersection, each encounter, suggest a new potential direction. Proposition, I have fallen in love with Luisa Rey. Is this possible? I just met her and yet, I feel like something important has happened to me.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“We are only what we know, and I wished to be so much more than I was, sorely.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“We looked at each other for the last time; nothing is as eloquent as nothing.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Time is what stops history happening at once; time is the speed at which the past disappears.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“What is any ocean but a multitude of drops?”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“...now I'm a spent firework; but at least I've been a firework.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“I understand now that boundaries between noise and sound are conventions. All boundaries are conventions, waiting to be transcended. One may transcend any convention if only one can first conceive of doing so.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“. . .my dreams are the single unpredictable factor in my zoned days and nights. Nobody allots them, or censors them. Dreams are all I have ever truly owned.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“I believe death is only a door. One closes, and another opens. If I were to imagine heaven, I would imagine a door opening. And he would be waiting for me there.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Whoever opined "Money can't buy you happiness" obviously had far too much of the stuff.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“The better organized the state, the duller its humanity.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“One fine day a predatory world shall consume itself.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Three or four times only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, depressions, cold fronts, ill winds, and contrary tides... I mistook them for adulthood. Assuming they were a fixed feature in my life's voyage, I neglected to record their latitude, their longitude, their approach. Young ruddy fool. What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“& 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?”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas