“People are obscenities. Would rather be music than be a mass of tubes squeezing semisolids around itself for a few decades before becoming so dribblesome it'll no longer fucntion.”

"Letters from Zedelghem", p. 470
Cloud Atlas (2004), Letters from Zedelghem (Part 2)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 26, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "People are obscenities. Would rather be music than be a mass of tubes squeezing semisolids around itself for a few deca…" by David Mitchell?
David Mitchell photo
David Mitchell 68
English novelist 1969

Related quotes

Mark Heard photo

“Why pray to a god who would rather speak through say, a stone? Too bad that God made so many people who are interested in music and so few stones who are.”

Mark Heard (1951–1992) American musician and record producer

Life in the Industry: A Musician's Diary

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo
Hunter S. Thompson photo

“Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles, Bubba….”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Source: Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century

T.S. Eliot photo
T.S. Eliot photo

“The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you,
The desert is in the heart of your brother.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Choruses from The Rock (1934)
Context: You neglect and belittle the desert.
The desert is not remote in southern tropics
The desert is not only around the corner,
The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you,
The desert is in the heart of your brother.

Alexis De Tocqueville photo

“I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.”

Alexis De Tocqueville (1805–1859) French political thinker and historian

Letter to Arthur de Gobineau, 22 October 1843, Tocqueville Reader, p. 229 http://books.google.com/books?id=JhEVK0UMgFMC&pg=PA229&vq=studied+the+koran&dq=%22few+religions+in+the+world+as+deadly+to+men+as+that+of+Muhammad%22+-tocqueville&source=gbs_search_s&cad=0
Original text: J’ai beaucoup étudié le Koran à cause surtout de notre position vis-à-vis des populations musulmanes en Algérie et dans tout l’Orient. Je vous avoue que je suis sorti de cette étude avec la conviction qu’il y avait eu dans le monde, à tout prendre, peu de religions aussi funestes aux hommes que celle de Mahomet. [...] Elle est, à mon sens, la principale cause de la décadence aujourd’hui si visible du monde musulman, et quoique moins absurde que le polythéisme antique, ses tendances sociales et politiques étant, à mon avis, infiniment plus à redouter, je la regarde relativement au paganisme lui-même comme une décadence plutôt que comme un progrès (Wikisource)
1840s

Douglas Adams photo
Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Marcus Tullius Cicero photo

“Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so.”
Virtute enim ipsa non tam multi praediti esse quam videri volunt.

Section 98
See also Esse quam videri
Source: Laelius De Amicitia – Laelius On Friendship (44 BC)

Related topics