Michel Faber Quotes & Sayings

I think there is that very basic yearning for something or someone to be looking after us, for there to be a framework holding the universe together that is benign and intelligent. We're not going to get rid of that; it's just too scary to be that molecule flying around briefly in a vacuum. — Michel Faber

She couldn't quite believe it, even after all these years. It was a phenomenon of stupendous and unjustifiably useless extravagance. Yet here it lay, soft and powdery, edibly pure. — Michel Faber

It was a husk, no longer truly their mother - more like their mother's most treasured possession, which had been given to them as a parting gift. — Michel Faber

Was a female. Isserley wasn't interested in females, at least not in that way. Let them get picked up by someone else. If the hitcher was male, she usually went back for another look, unless he was an obvious weakling. Assuming he'd made a reasonable impression on her, — Michel Faber

Without you at my side, I feel as though my eyes are just a camera, like a closed-circuit camera without film in it, registering what's out there, second by second, letting it all vanish instantly to be replaced by more images, none of them properly appreciated. — Michel Faber

In all of my work, I think I'm exploring the idea that we are aliens to each other, how there is a huge distance that separates us all. — Michel Faber

UFCNo such thing as childhood memories, he says. We're just playing games with our neurons every day, tossing them around the hippocampus, constructing little fairy tales featuring characters named after people we used to live with. 'Your dad is just a flurry of molecular activity in your frontal lobe' he'll tell you... — Michel Faber

The family I grew up in was very inflexible and harsh. It left me with the feeling that if you do let somebody down badly, then even if they tell you it's all right, it cannot be all right. — Michel Faber

Peter ... " She let her head fall back against the seat and sighed. "Let's not go there."
"That's what people always say about places where they already are. — Michel Faber

All my novels are about people who strive to heal and evolve. — Michel Faber

One of the things my success as an author has forced me to face is how dysfunctional ... Maybe that's a strong word, but how obsessive I am. — Michel Faber

A text may be superbly written, exquisitely subtle, deeply meaningful, but still seem like a luxury extra, something we add to the already well-stocked store of our reading experience. — Michel Faber

Protective of his gleaming domain, beavering away in it alone like an obsessed scientist in a humid and luridly lit laboratory. — Michel Faber

A truly modern man, William Rackham is what might be called a superstitious atheist Christian; that is, he believes in a God who, while He may no longer be responsible for the sun rising, the saving of the Queen or the provision of daily bread, is still the prime suspect when anything goes wrong. — Michel Faber

If she were its leader. Not that she ever would be: she was born to be a dissenter within a larger certainty, she knows that. — Michel Faber

Prostitution.' He enunciates the word clearly, gazing directly into her eyes, knowing, God damn it, that he is being cruel. In the back of his mind, a kinder William Rackham watches impotently as his wife is penetrated by that single elongated word, its four slick syllables barbed midway with t's. Agnes's cameo face goes white as she gulps for air. — Michel Faber

So many books that have Christian characters but are written by atheists mercilessly pillory and mock and question the motives of people with faith. I'm past all that. — Michel Faber

Nothing happened, and time stubbornly refused to pass. — Michel Faber

He thought about history, the hidden human anxieties behind momentous events. The tiny trivial things that were probably bothering Einstein or Darwin or Newton as they formulated their theories: arguments with the landlady, maybe, or concern over a blocked fireplace. The pilots who bombed Dresden, fretting over a phrase in a letter from back home: What did she mean by that? Or what about Columbus, when he was sailing toward the New Land ... who knows what was on his mind? The last words spoken to him by an old friend, perhaps, a person not even remembered in history books ... — Michel Faber

How's things, man?" The black man extended his hand for a handshake. Mathematical formulae were jotted on the sleeve of his shirt, right up to the elbow.
"Very good," said Peter. It had never occurred to him before that dark-skinned people didn't have the option of jotting numbers on their skin. You learned something new about human diversity every day. — Michel Faber

When answering questions over the years about film and TV adaptations of my books, I have always maintained that no movie or TV series could ever change or damage my work. — Michel Faber

Modern politicians like Cameron dream of exerting paternal influence without being seen as paternalistic, of fostering moral behaviour without being considered moralistic. — Michel Faber

Someone at work said to me this morning, "Where is God in all this?" I didn't rise to the bait. I can never understand why people ask that question. The real question for the bystanders of tragedy is "Where are WE in all this?" I've always tried to come up with answers to that challenge. I don't know if I can at the moment. Pray for me. — Michel Faber

They both sat in silence for the rest of the journey, as if conscious of having let each other down. — Michel Faber

Can't you see that? Everybody's sentimental, everybody. — Michel Faber

Why, the top-notch gentleman visits his hatter every few days just to have his hat ironed! — Michel Faber

A simple fuck is one thing, but let a man sleep with you just once and he thinks he can bring his dog and his pigeons. — Michel Faber

You know,' Amlis went on, 'Some water fell out of the sky not so long ago.' His voice was a little higher than usual, vulnerable with awe. 'It just fell out of the sky. In little droplets, thousands of them close together. I looked up to see where they were coming from. They seemed to be materializing out of nowhere. I couldn't believe it. Then I opened my mouth to the sky. Some droplets fell straight in. It was an indescribable feeling. As if nature was actually trying to nurture me. — Michel Faber

[ ... ] how can one sleep while dancing at the edge of waves? — Michel Faber

At university, one of my areas of study was Victorian literature, so I decided to see if I could write a novel as carefully planned and constructed as those of George Eliot, but with the narrative energy of Dickens. — Michel Faber

A single day spent doing things which fail to nourish the soul is a day stolen, mutilated, and discarded in the gutter of destiny. — Michel Faber

Pathos and poignancy are, to me, tactics and techniques; in my work as a writer, I fetch them from my toolbox and use them as required. — Michel Faber

Not for the first time, Peter thought about how much of our lives we spend sequestered inside small patches of electric brightness, blind to everything beyond the reach of those fragile bulbs. — Michel Faber

I joined an Internet community of Victorian scholars, which meant that if I posted a question about 1875's lavender harvest, more than a thousand experts would ponder it. — Michel Faber

Hope is a fragile thing, Peter continued, as fragile as a flower. Its fragility makes it easy to sneer at, by people who see life as a dark and difficult ordeal, people who get angry when something they can't believe in themselves gives comfort to others. They prefer to crush the flower underfoot, as if to say: See how weak this thing is, see how easily it can be destroyed. But, in truth, hope is one of the strongest things in the universe. Empires fall, civilizations vanish into dust, but hope always comes back, pushing up through the ashes, growing from seeds that are invisible and invincible. — Michel Faber

Why are there such long words in the world, Miss?' enquires Sophie, when the mineralogy lesson is over.
'One long difficult word is the same as a whole sentence full of short easy ones, Sophie,' says Sugar. 'It saves time and paper.' Seeing that the child is unconvinced, she adds, 'If books were written in such a way that every person, no matter how young, could understand everything in them, they would be enormously long books. Would you wish to read a book that was a thousand pages long, Sophie?'
Sophie answers without hesitation.
'I would read a thousand million pages, Miss, if all the words were words I could understand. — Michel Faber

I tend to process emotional stuff very, very slowly. — Michel Faber

People and their dwellings were such a thin dust on the surface of the globe, like invisible specks of bacteria on an orange, and the feeble lights of kebab shops and supermarkets failed utterly to register on the infinities of space above. — Michel Faber

Art is head space that is very exclusive: it shuts people out; other people cease to exist. — Michel Faber

These days, the bigger the company, the less you can figure out what it does. — Michel Faber

I wanted each of my books to be very different from the others, each to be special and uncategorizable, and I knew I could only do that a few times before I was in danger of repeating myself. — Michel Faber

Because I must do something while I still can. Each soul is still incalculably precious. — Michel Faber

I would love to have faith. When you take God out of the universe, there is no-one taking care us - we are just parcels of meat, collections of atoms - we have a little flowering on Earth, and then we're gone. — Michel Faber

He didn't want to be like some old-fashioned imperialist missionary, poncing about like Moses in a safari suit, capitalizing on a misconception that he was from the same tribe as Jesus and that God was an Englishman. — Michel Faber

I sometimes think that the only things really worth talking about are the things people absolutely refuse to discuss. — Michel Faber

She sings on and on, while the house is discreetly dusted all around her and, in the concealed and subterranean kitchen, a naked duck, limp and faintly steaming, spreads its pimpled legs on a draining board. — Michel Faber

The privileged Victorians who did most to improve the lives of the poor were not ashamed of their pious intent: they were superiors seeking to help inferiors. — Michel Faber

Most true things are kind of corny, don't you think? But we make them more sophisticated out of sheer embarrassment. — Michel Faber

But miracles are not for the asking; they come only when the stern eyes of God droop shut for a moment, and Our Lady takes advantage of His inattention to grant an illicit mercy. God ... is an Anglican, whereas Our Lady is of the True Faith; the two of Them have an uneasy relationship, unable to agree on anything, except that if They divorce, the Devil will leap gleefully into the breach. — Michel Faber

The variety of shapes, colours and textures under her feet was, she believed, literally infinite. It must be. Each shell, each pebble, each stone had been made what it was by aeons of submarine or subglacial massage. The indiscriminate, eternal devotion of nature to its numberless particles had an emotional importance for Isserley; it put the unfairness of human life into perspective. — Michel Faber

The indiscriminate, eternal devotion of nature to its numberless particles had an emotional importance for Isserley; it put the — Michel Faber

God preserve us from fuddle-headed young men who want money for building cloud-castles! — Michel Faber

What do his ambitions matter, if those are her collar-bones? — Michel Faber

Strange how a specimen like him, well cared for, healthy, free to roam the world, and blessed with a perfection of form which would surely have allowed him to breed with a greater selection of females than average, could still be so miserable. By contrast, other males, scarred by neglect, riddled with diseases, spurned by their kind, were occasionally known to radiate a contentment that seemed to arise from something more enigmatic than mere stupidity. — Michel Faber

Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them. — Michel Faber

I strive to use references that may still make some kind of sense once our age has passed into history. That robs my writing of a certain connectedness to my time, but potentially might allow it to make sense to people who are not in this time. — Michel Faber

Of course I know that the twins are only words on a page, and I'm certainly not the sort of writer who talks to his characters or harbours any illusions about the creative process. But at the same time, I think it's juvenile and arrogant when literary writers compulsively remind their readers that the characters aren't real. People know that already. The challenge is to make an intelligent reader suspend disbelief, to seduce them into the reality of a narrative. — Michel Faber

I think I have written the things I was put on Earth to write. — Michel Faber

The mere fact of my novel being filmed means very little to me. For a long while after 'The Crimson Petal's publication in 2002, it looked as though Hollywood was going to adapt it. — Michel Faber

You one of those decaffeinated Christians, padre? The diabetic wafer? Doctrine-free, guilt-reduced, low in Last judgement, 100% less Second Coming, no added Armageddon? Might contain small traces of crucified Jew? — Michel Faber

My affinity, as a novelist, with Dickens has been overstated. I relish the way everything in his prose pulsates with life force, and I'm in debt to him every time I invest inanimate objects with uncanny animism. But his female characters annoy me. — Michel Faber

Peter's hands had ceased trembling. He had been granted perspective. This was not Gethsemane: he wasn't headed for Golgotha, he was embarking on a great adventure. He'd been chosen out of thousands, to pursue the most important missionary calling since the Apostles had ventured forth to conquer Rome with the power of love, and he was going to do his best. — Michel Faber

Well, here we are.
Sometimes a statement of the bloody obvious was the only appropriate way forward. As if to give life ceremonious permission to proceed. — Michel Faber

Their consciousness was rudimentary. — Michel Faber

Being apart was wrong. Simply lying side by side did more for a relationship than words. A warm bed, a nest of animal intimacy. Words could be misunderstood, whereas loving companionship bred trust. — Michel Faber

I'm a loner and always have been. — Michel Faber

Yes, seven years old she was, when she finally plucked up the courage to ask her mother what Christmas was all about, and Mrs Castaway replied (once only, after which the subject was forever forbidden): 'It's the day Jesus Christ died for our sins. Evidently unsuccessfully, since we're still paying for them. — Michel Faber

Forgive me, Lord, for the smallness and selfishness of my mind. Amen. — Michel Faber

Sugar understood the permanence of being Sugar or Lotty or Lucy or whoever you might be, trapped on a square of card to be shown at will to strangers. Whatever violations she routinely submits to in the privacy of bedroom, they vanish the moment they're over, half-forgotten with the drying of sweat. But to be chemically fixed in time and passed hand to hand forever: that is a nakedness which can never be clothed again — Michel Faber

I got fed up with the human race, really. I got a very negative feeling about human potentials. And for a while, I thought I might write a book without any human beings in it whatsoever. — Michel Faber

Really good books need a chaos element: something weird or inexplicable. — Michel Faber

The past was dwindling, like something shrinking to a speck in the rear-view mirror, and the future was shining through the windscreen, demanding her full attention. — Michel Faber

If someone's a cartoon villain, you can dismiss them, but if they behave despicably but you kind of like them, they really get under your skin. — Michel Faber

Unreality was swirling all around her like the delirious miasmas — Michel Faber

I wouldn't use the word 'man'. The Hebrew is ha-adam, which I would argue encompasses both sexes. — Michel Faber

History indulges strange whims in the way it dresses its women. — Michel Faber

There were no oceans on Oasis, no large bodies of water, and presumably no fish.
He wondered whether this would cause comprehension problems when it came to certain crucial fish-related Bible stories. There were so many of those: Jonah and the whale, the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, the Galilean disciples being fishermen, the whole 'fishers of men' analogy . . . the bit in Matthew 13 about the kingdom of heaven being like a net cast into the sea, gathering fish of every kind . . . Even in the opening chapter of Genesis, the first animals God made were sea creatures. How much of the Bible would he have to give up as untranslatable? — Michel Faber

The world changes too fast. You take your eyes off something that's always been there, and the next minute it's just a memory. — Michel Faber

a child's disquiet is as potent as a damp fart. — Michel Faber

It was already tomorrow. She should have known from the beginning that it would end like this. — Michel Faber

The word troubled her, though. 'Indispensable.' It was a word people tended to resort to when dispensability was in the air. — Michel Faber

He only wished he'd had the chance to explain more fully how prayer worked. That it wasn't a matter of asking for things and being accepted or rejected, it was a matter of adding one's energy - insignificant in itself - to the vastly greater energy that was God's love. In fact, it was an affirmation of being part of God, an aspect of His spirit temporarily housed inside a body. — Michel Faber

Clothes are nothing more than a fig leaf. And the bodies beneath are just another layer of clothing, an outfit of flesh with an impractically thin leather exterior, in various shades of pink, yellow and brown. The souls alone are real. Seen in this way, there can never be any such thing as social unease or shyness or embarrassment. All you need do is greet your fellow soul. — Michel Faber

Isn't Heaven reward enough, without needing to see the damned punished? — Michel Faber

For years, I was quite a militant atheist. I wanted to burn down all the churches or turn them into second-hand record emporiums. — Michel Faber

All sens of purpose, of responsibility, indeed of any imaginable future, were removed from her by the deaths of her husband and child. It was they who used to make her life a story, they who seemed to be giving it a beginning, a middle and an end. Nowadays, her life is more like a newspaper: aimless, up-to-date, full of meaningless events for Colonel Leek to recite when no one's paying attention. For all the use she is to Society, beyond intercepting the odd squirt of sperm that would otherwise have troubled a respectable wife, she might as well be dead. Yet, she exists, and, against the odds, she is happy. — Michel Faber

The crowds that queued for snacks and knick-knacks, the constant stream of passengers recorded by the closed-circuit TVs, were wondrous proof of the sheer variety of human specimens, except that they were presumed to be identically faithless inside, duty-free in every sense of that word. — Michel Faber

On an average day, I spend 12 hours listening to music. Very little writing. — Michel Faber

When we ask bureaucrats to identify who is responsible for fixing anything, they reassure us that there are 'procedures in place.' — Michel Faber

Only the other day, Robbie had gone to a terrible disco in Alness, hoping it would transform his life in some way. — Michel Faber

How strange it was to be inside a machine again! All his life he'd been inside machines, whether he realised it or not. Modern houses were machines. Shopping centres were machines. Schools. Cars. Trains. Cities. They were all sophisticated technological constructs, wired up with lights and motors. You switched them on, and didn't spare them a thought while they pampered you with unnatural services. — Michel Faber

I'm still tremendously proud of 'Crimson Petal.' I'm still very emotionally involved with these characters. I still care about them. — Michel Faber

It was such an infantile prayer, the sort of prayer a five-year-old might pray. But maybe those were the best kind. — Michel Faber

What do you expect? This place is one big anti-climax. — Michel Faber

God damn God and all His horrible filthy Creation. — Michel Faber

All along the street, keys rattle in key-holes as each shop's ornate metal clothing is stripped away ... It's as if, having unlocked the chastity of shutters and doors, they can't see the point in maintaining any shred of modesty. — Michel Faber

You want Paradise, you gotta build it on war, on blood, on envy and naked greed. — Michel Faber

Proof, once again, that reality was not objective, but always waiting to be reshaped and redefined by one's attitude. — Michel Faber

One of the things that struck me about the 1870s, which we still haven't nearly addressed, is what to do about the male-female divide. One of the forbidden topics is when men own up to the omnivorousness of their sexual interest and how to square that with being in love with an individual woman. — Michel Faber

Few know what year it is, or even that eighteen and a half centuries are supposed to have passed since a Jewish troublemaker was hauled away to the gallows for disturbing the peace — Michel Faber