Quotes from Michel Faber

away, and she could carry a bag on each arm, providing

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. If it weren't for God, the almighty vacuum would be too crushing to endure, but once God was with you, it was a different story.

behaving as if his actions didn't need defending. Typical rich kid, typical pampered little tycoon. None of their actions ever needed defending, did they?

Let's not go there.' 'That's what people always say about places where they already are.

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

Their wealth makes them like a different creature, an exotic thing that doesn't have to function like a human.

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.

Vintage wine and alehouse beer is how Bodley likes to put it. In the pursuit of pleasure, both have their place.

These days, the bigger the company, the less you can figure out what it does. Time was when a car company made cars, a mining company dug mines. It's not like that anymore.

No one plays the silent flute better than she does!

When you planted a dead person in the ground, there should be lots of people singing and dancing and eating nice food and telling stories while the sun beamed down.

Todos nosotros somos a la vez objeto de repugnancia y de envidia. Todos nosotros menos los muy pobres, los que sólo tienen por debajo de ellos el pozo séptico del infierno.

Which just goes to prove that it's not gossips who decide the span of human life, but God.

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

a child's disquiet is as potent as a damp fart.

No desea que los hombres la consideren hermosa. Tal cosa sólo conduce a la infelicidad. Tampoco espera la admiración de otras mujeres; de ellas sólo espera una indiferencia cortés y un cotilleo rencoroso a sus espaldas.

but the world remains a dangerous place and we remain—merely by being human—vulnerable to the horrors that humans can cause.

Words could be misunderstood, whereas loving companionship bred trust.

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.

Anyway, when sophisticated technology fails, primitive technology steps in to do the job.

we can't keep it going if too much of what we need is taken away from us.

but that German sounds like old clergymen vomiting.

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

Mientras se encaminaba en dirección norte para regresar a casa, se le ocurrió que, quizás, si anunciaba ante el universo, con la suficiente firmeza, que había abandonado toda esperanza, al final aparecería algo.