Michel Faber

I'm a loner and always have been.

— 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

Reassurance is such a sad, mad thing. Deep inside, everyone knows the truth.

— Michel Faber

Most distracting of all, though, was not the threat of danger but the allure of beauty.

— Michel Faber

“As Christians, we should spread the love of Christ. If we do our job right, we’ll create people who don’t want to…

— Michel Faber

'A Christmas Carol' is an extravagantly symbolic thing - as rich in symbols as Christmas pudding is rich in raisins.

— 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

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

— Michel Faber

Participating in Society in not a thing one can do naturally; one has to rehearse for it.

— Michel Faber

A text may be superbly written, exquisitely subtle, deeply meaningful, but still seem like a luxury extra, something we add to the…

— 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…

— Michel Faber

By recycling pre-existing material, Shakespeare seemed to endorse a view common in his time, which has become even more entrenched in the…

— Michel Faber

I wanted each of my books to be very different from the others, each to be special and uncategorizable, and I knew…

— Michel Faber

I never, ever want to be in a position where people are sitting round a table, saying, 'We've got this book. I…

— Michel Faber

I would love to have faith. When you take God out of the universe, there is no-one taking care us - we…

— 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

“Sunlight is bad,' he wheezes. 'It's the exact same stuff as breeds maggots in wounded soldiers' legs. And when there's no war…

— 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…

— Michel Faber

“Her invisible remains would combine, over time, with all the wonders under the sun. When it snowed she would be part of…

— Michel Faber

“Yes, seven years old she was, when she finally plucked up the courage to ask her mother what Christmas was all about,…

— Michel Faber

Total oblivion is the fate of almost everything in this world. I'm very likely to suffer that same fate; my work will…

— Michel Faber

“...to her, all familiar responses smell of entrapment. Sharing an old joke, singing an old song - these are admissions of defeat,…

— Michel Faber

Of course it's fun writing about an egomaniac, but I know there are going to be reviewers who've never met me, who…

— Michel Faber

Clothes are nothing more than a fig leaf. And the bodies beneath are just another layer of clothing, an outfit of flesh…

— Michel Faber

“He was too frightened to speak. This was no hallucination. This was what happened to the universe when you were no longer…

— Michel Faber

Nowadays, her life is more like a newspaper: aimless, up-to-date and full of meaningless events

— Michel Faber

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

— Michel Faber

I had been attempting novels since I was 14 but always ran out of steam. High hopes, poor craftsmanship.

— Michel Faber

A single day spent doing things which fail to nourish the soul is a day stolen, mutilated, and discarded in the gutter…

— Michel Faber

I am a fallen woman, but I assure you: I did not fall. I was pushed.

— 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…

— Michel Faber

In 1978, when I was 17 and in my first year at university, I read approximately 3,500 pages of Dickens.

— Michel Faber

“But to be chemically fixed in time and passed hand to hand forever: that is a nakedness which can never be clothed…

— Michel Faber

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

— Michel Faber

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

— Michel Faber

So many books that have Christian characters but are written by atheists mercilessly pillory and mock and question the motives of people…

— Michel Faber

“She sings on and on, while the house is discreetly dusted all around her and, in the concealed and subterranean kitchen, a…

— Michel Faber

“Few know what year it is, or even that eighteen and a half centuries are supposed to have passed since a Jewish…

— Michel Faber

“He ought to have conceded that she was a flower not destined to open, a hothouse creation, no less beautiful, no less…

— Michel Faber

“A person who is worth nothing must introduce you to a person worth next-to-nothing, and that person to another, and so on…

— Michel Faber