Michel Faber
Michel Faber
Michel Faberis a Dutch-born writer of English-language fiction, including his 2002 novel The Crimson Petal and the White...
NationalityDutch
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth13 April 1960
embody few human people stories truth
Very few stories embody a human truth so definitively that we cannot think of the truth without remembering the story and cannot imagine how people ever got by without it.
contempt joyce letters people throughout virginia writers
I think throughout the 20th century, for some reason, serious writers increasingly had contempt for the average reader. You can really see this in the letters of such people as Joyce and Virginia Woolf.
basic benign framework holding looking rid scary yearning
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.
age allow certain history might passed people references strive time
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.
atoms care faith flowering god love taking
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.
arts australia english fell holland learnt love visual
When I was a kid, it was thought I would do something in the visual arts because I was always drawing, but when we emigrated to Australia from Holland when I was seven, I learnt the English language, and I fell in love with it.
answering change damage maintained questions series tv work
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.
community experts internet joined meant ponder posted question thousand victorian
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.
paid people position round sell tony
I never, ever want to be in a position where people are sitting round a table, saying, 'We've got this book. I don't really get it, but we paid for it, so we've got to sell it.' I'm not Tony Parsons; that's not right for me.
cannot family grew left somebody
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.
books car lovers male manuals men serious
Before I was published, I thought men read car manuals or books about football. But once I started having really serious conversations with male lovers of literature, I let go of that prejudice.
books good
Really good books need a chaos element: something weird or inexplicable.
fetch pathos poignancy work
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.
author forced maybe obsessive success
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.