Difference in usage between "мол" and "де"

Question

Натолкнувшийся на меня Фарсад, невесело улыбнулся – мол, не у одного тебя кошки на душе скребут, потом вдруг со всего размаха врезал меня по плечу, и проговорил:

As particles to mark reported speech, how do they differ in usage?

As to "мол", does only context -- regardless of punctuation -- help determine which part of a sentence is such reported speech?

Натолкнувшийся на меня Фарсад, невесело улыбнулся – мол, не у одного тебя кошки на душе скребут, потом вдруг со всего размаха врезал меня по плечу, и проговорил:

Answer 1

-де is added to a word as a postfix, while мол, can precede a whole phrase or be inserted between words. The phrase should express reported speech or an allusion to someone else's words.

As -де tends to be an archaism now, it is stylistically demanding, and can sometimes be used to make the sentence a bit offencive. But a hundred years ago it was not offencive.