Quotes from Michel Faber

Uh-huh.' 'And even inside this car, assuming you could have a car, or some sort of vehicle, in this natural world, pulled by horses I suppose . . . It would be pitch black. And very cold, too, on a winter's night. But instead, look what we've got

Oasans slept a lot; they got tired easily. They'd work for an hour or two, and then, whether the task had been arduous or not, they would go home and rest in bed for a while. Peter stretched in

Wrinkles of the future, cicatrices of the past, all the million marks recording a private life that no outsider could ever understand.

I believe I... offended them in some way. I don't know how. I think my English is not as good as it needs to be in certain situations.' 'It sounds excellent to me.' He sighed. 'That is the problem perhaps. If it was worse, there would be an expectation of...' He laboured silently, then let the sentence roll back down the mountain. 'There would not be the automatic expectation of shared understanding.

The fucking world is falling apart and it still doesn't rate as an emergency. Do you really think they're gonna panic over us?

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.

Most true things are kind of corny, don't you think? But we make them more sophisticated out of sheer embarrassment. Simple truths with complicated clothes on. The only purpose of the linguistic dressing-up is so people won't look at the contents of our naked hears and minds and say "How naff.

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

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.

She liked sheep more than any other animal; they had an innocence and a serene intentness about them that was worlds away from the brutish cunning and manic excitability of, say, vodsels. Seen in poor light, they could almost be human children.

That's what lying had done to the world. All the lying that people had been doing since the dawn of time, all the lying they were doing still. The price everyone paid for it was the death of trust. It meant that no two humans, however innocent they might be, could ever approach one another like two animals. Civilization!

Era un hombre de muchos planes, pero de poco fruto.

No news is good news, as some people might say. Uncomforted

Don't cry, it distracts the dog." "I can't help it," she replied. "Then cry," he sighed. "But explain the historical context.

He cupped his testicles in his hands, and, with his wrists, pressed his penis hard against his belly until the semen came.

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

Was it always the desirable ones that sat in silence, and the misshapen rejects that prattled away unprompted?

He was too frightened to speak. This was no hallucination. This was what happened to the universe when you were no longer able to hold it together. Atoms in clusters, rays of light, forming ephemeral shapes before moving on. His greatest fear, as he dissolved into the dark, was that he would never see other humans the same way again.

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.

Listen up: You can't go home again.

the downtrodden may yearn to be heard, but if a voice from a more privileged sphere speaks on their behalf, they'll roll their eyes and jeer at the voice's accent.

Locating a past event in measured time was something they could do with great effort, as a special favor, but Peter could tell they didn't see the point. Why should it matter exactly how many days, weeks, months or years ago a relative had died? A person was either living amongst them or in the ground.

The earth, being earth, cannot feel gratitude or award us with medals, but it can grow flowers, and that is our reward.

There's always places where things aren't so bad: cheaper accommodation, cheaper food, cheaper fuel. You go there and it's OK for a while. Then it stops being OK and you get the hell out.