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
real yellow clothes
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.
real writing character
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.
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.
danger few knew repeating
I wanted each of my books to be very different from the others, each to be special and uncategorizable, and I knew I could only do that a few times before I was in danger of repeating myself.
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.
average hours music
On an average day, I spend 12 hours listening to music. Very little writing.
exploring huge separates work
In all of my work, I think I'm exploring the idea that we are aliens to each other, how there is a huge distance that separates us all.
pages
In 1978, when I was 17 and in my first year at university, I read approximately 3,500 pages of Dickens.
behave dismiss
If someone's a cartoon villain, you can dismiss them, but if they behave despicably but you kind of like them, they really get under your skin.
I'm still tremendously proud of 'Crimson Petal.' I'm still very emotionally involved with these characters. I still care about them.
I was disinclined to have the status of a writer.
I think I have written the things I was put on Earth to write.