Book detail: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas is a complex and ambitious novel that weaves together six interrelated stories set in various eras and locations. The narrative spans from the 19th century to a post-apocalyptic future, featuring characters from diverse backgrounds and experiences. Each story is unique yet interconnected, reflecting the universal human condition and the idea that actions in one life can have repercussions in another. This enhanced movie tie-in edition includes additional content related to the film adaptation.
The quotes below use the same card format as the rest of the site, including topics, source notes, copy actions, image creation, and sharing controls.
Read more
“To fool a judge, feign fascination, but to bamboozle the whole court, feign boredom.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“Beyond the Indian hamlet, upon a forlorn strand, I happened on a trail of recent footprints.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“Wars do not combust without warning. They begin as little fires over the horizon. Wars approach. A wise man watches for the smoke, and prepares to vacate the neighborhood, just like Ayrs and Jocasta. My worry is that the next war will be so big, nowhere with a decent restaurant will be left untouched.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“... but it is attitude, not years, that condemns one to the ranks of the Undead, or else proffers salvation. In the domain of the young there dwells many an Undead soul. They rush about so, their inner putrefaction is concealed for a few decades, that is all.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“Yay, Old'uns' Smart mastered sicks, miles, seeds an' made miracles ord'nary, but it din't master one thing, nay, a hunger in the hearts o' humans, yay, a hunger for more.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“Writing is such a damn lonely sickness.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“Birdsong foamed in the hour-before-dawn garden.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“I am, emphatically. Mental illness triggered by xperimental error.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“Oh, diplomacy ... it mops up war's spillages; legitimizes its outcomes; gives the strong state the means to impose its will on a weaker one, while saving its fleets and battalions for weightier opponents.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“Science devises ever bloodier means of war until humanity's powers of destruction overcome our powers of creation and our civilisation drives itself to extinction.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“History admits no rules; only outcomes.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“What is any ocean but a multitude of drops?”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms around the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“I remain thankful to God for all his mercies.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“Peace, though beloved of our Lord, is a cardinal virtue only if your neighbors share your conscience.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“The better organized the state, the duller its humanity.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“An idler and a sluggard are as different as a gourmand and a glutton.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“Whoever opined "Money can't buy you happiness" obviously had far too much of the stuff.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“Only professional diplomats, inveterate idiots and women view diplomacy as a long-term substitute for war.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“Faith, the least exclusive club on Earth, has the craftiest doorman.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“As an experienced editor, I disapprove of flashbacks, foreshadowings, and tricksy devices; they belong in the 1980s with M.A.s in postmodernism and chaos theory.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“Men invented money Women invented mutual aid”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“The weak are meat the strong do eat.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“Lying's wrong, but when the world spins backwards, a small wrong may be a big right.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“Oh, bein' young ain't easy 'cos ev'rythin' you're puzzlin'n'anxin' you're puzzlin'n'anxin' it for the first time.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“I wonder if you encountered this dictum first spoken by a twentieth-century statesman: "An abyss cannot be crossed in two steps.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“How lazily "xperts" dismiss what they fail to understand!”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“Anticipating the end of the world is humanity's oldest passtime”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“Truth is singular. Its 'versions' are mistruths.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“It's true, reading too many novels makes you go blind.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“It's a small world. It keeps recrossing itself.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“So winners, Hae-Joo proposed, are the real losers because they learn nothing? What, then, are losers? Winners?”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“Assured her I've never loved anyone except myself and have no intention of starting now.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“clocks in disagreement are worse than no clock at all.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“The spirit was willing but the flesh was weak.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“Why ask a question whose answer would demand ten more questions?”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“Leaves turned to soil beneath my feet. Thus it is, trees eat themselves.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“Don't bemoan your misspent life quite yet. Forgive me for flaunting my experience, but you have no conception of what a misspent life constitutes.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“Implausible truth can serve one better than plausible fiction”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“What is "poker"? A card game where abler liars take money off less able liars.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“But no, we cross, crisscross, and recross our old tracks like figure skaters.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel