Sebastian Faulks
Sebastian Faulks
Sebastian Charles Faulks CBEis a British novelist, journalist and broadcaster. He is best known for his historical novels set in France – The Girl at the Lion d'Or, Birdsong and Charlotte Gray. He has also published novels with a contemporary setting, most recently A Week in December, and a James Bond continuation novel, Devil May Care, as well as a continuation of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves series, Jeeves and the Wedding Bells. He is a team captain on BBC Radio 4...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth20 April 1953
accessible issues large people
I want to write about serious things, but I want to write about them in a way that makes them accessible to a large number of people - to take them through the argument by dramatizing the circumstances in which these issues are being discussed.
deal decisions demands equipped life people understand
I don't know how you can understand other people or yourself if you haven't read a lot of books. I just don't think you're equipped to deal with the demands and decisions of life, particularly in your dealings with other people.
believe defining experience force greatest human inevitably intensely love people stop
I believe that love between people is the greatest life-giving force in the world. It's intensely frustrating and inevitably makes a fool of you, but you can't stop going back to it, and it's pretty much the defining experience of a human being.
motivation numbers people
They're so attached to their patterns that they've forgotten rule number one of human behavior: there are no patterns. People just do things. There's no such things as a coherent and fully integrated human personality, let alone consistent motivation.
people alive hardest
One of the hardest things about being alive is being with other people.
people alive conscious
This is how most people live: alive, but not conscious; conscious but not aware; aware, but intermittently.
summer wind people
The end-of-summer winds make people restless.
best developing few films inward novel pictures portray processes relationships
Why would a novel - which is all about the inward processes of people's developing feelings and developing relationships - why would you be able to portray that in pictures with as few words as possible, which is what the best films are?
brief christian fully human nature religion simply understand
The religion I know most about, which is the Christian one, would simply say that it's not really for one man or woman to know fully and to understand the nature of our brief human existence.
annoyed home interiors interviews remarks shops taste
I don't do interviews at home any more because my wife doesn't like having her taste in interiors put through the mill. And I get annoyed when journalists make snide remarks about the annoyingly pretentious shops in the neighbourhood - because I hate them just as much.
against ethically great holds proper testament
It is fair to say the New Testament is the most ethically sophisticated of the great scriptures; the proper comparison for the Qur'an is with the Old Testament - against which it holds its own.
beat best console depends hugely possible sort within worked
Certainly, we all have within us the potential to live in a hugely different way. And how happy you can make yourself, I think, a lot depends on how much you beat yourself up about that; and how much you can, in some sort of providential way, console yourself and say, 'Well, it's all worked out for the best, in the best of all possible worlds.'
battle melancholy tremendous
I have a tremendous battle with melancholy and depression.
attraction books dissimilar history possible publishing
It's possible there are no two books in publishing history more dissimilar than 'Human Traces' and 'Devil May Care.' And that was really the attraction of it.