Quotes from Michel Faber

I get increasingly respectful of people who have faith and increasingly creeped out by them.

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.

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.

I think that if you are a serious writer, you are almost obligated to provide the intelligent average reader with something that they can relate to and care about. If you are writing only for a tiny elite, then that surely should sound alarm bells.

History proves that most writers get forgotten anyway. That's very likely to happen to my books, and if I'm extremely lucky, maybe one of my books will survive.

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

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.

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.

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.

I don't remember my childhood very well for one reason or another, possibly childhood trauma or possibly just a very bad memory. My early life has sort of been erased from my memory banks.

Most books are surplus to the world's requirements, and I am going to sound very conceited here, but I am trying to write books that aren't just using up trees.

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

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.

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

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.

There was a red button on the wall labelled EMERGENCY, but no button labelled BEWILDERMENT.

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.

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.

We're moving towards such a strange time.A time when all our moral choices will be complicated and compromised by our love of progress

We are all specialised forms of survivor. We lack what we fundamentally need and forge ahead regardless, hurriedly hiding our wounds, disguising our ineptitude, bluffing our way through our weaknesses.

She talks about being a Christian as if it's a gym membership you can sign up for.

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.

He ought to have conceded that she was a flower not destined to open, a hothouse creation, no less beautiful, no less woth having, He should have admired her, praised her and, at the close of day, let her be.

This is a street where the weaker souls crawl into bed as soon as the sun sets and lie awake listening to the rats.