David Mitchell

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.

For me, novels coalesce into being, rather than arrive fully formed.

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.

Another thing that freaks me out is time. Time is like a book. You have a beginning, a middle and an end. It's just a cycle.

I'm a big action junkie. I grew up on the '80s action movies - the bad ones and the good ones.

After one year in the Texas League, the American League bought the rights to my contract. They optioned me back to the Texas League for the 1970 season.