1
Being apart was wrong. Simply lying side by side did more for a relationship than words. A warm bed, a nest of animal intimacy. Words could be misunderstood, whereas loving companionship bred trust.Michel Faber
2
The world changes too fast. You take your eyes off something that's always been there, and the next minute it's just a memory.Michel Faber
3
There were no oceans on Oasis, no large bodies of water, and presumably no fish. He wondered whether this would cause comprehension problems when it came to certain crucial fish-related Bible stories. There were so many of those: Jonah and the whale, the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, the Galilean disciples being fishermen, the whole ‘fishers of men’ analogy . the bit in Matthew 13 about the kingdom of heaven being like a net cast into the sea, gathering fish of every kind . Even in the opening chapter of Genesis, the first animals God made were sea creatures. How much of the Bible would he have to give up as untranslatable? .Michel Faber
4
Some people go through the heavy stuff. They fight in wars. They're in jail. They start a business and it gets shut down by gangsters. They end up hustling their ass in a foreign country. It's one long list of setbacks and humiliations. But it doesn't touch them, not really. They're having an adventure. It's like: What's next? And then there's other people who are just trying to live quietly, they stay out of trouble, they're maybe ten years old, or fourteen, and one Friday morning at 9:35 something happens to them, something private, something that breaks their heart. Forever. .Michel Faber
5
What do you expect? This place is one big anti-climax.Michel Faber
6
Anyway, when sophisticated technology fails, primitive technology steps in to do the job.Michel Faber
7
Most true things are kind of corny, don’t you think? But we make them more sophisticated out of sheer embarrassment.Michel Faber
8
You want Paradise, you gotta build it on war, on blood, on envy and naked greed.Michel Faber
9
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.Michel Faber
10
These days, the bigger the company, the less you can figure out what it does.Michel Faber
11
There is so little in the New Testament about sexual love, and most of it consists of Paul heaving a deep sigh and tolerating it like a weakness.Michel Faber
12
How’s things, man?” The black man extended his hand for a handshake. Mathematical formulae were jotted on the sleeve of his shirt, right up to the elbow.“ Very good, ” said Peter. It had never occurred to him before that dark-skinned people didn’t have the option of jotting numbers on their skin. You learned something new about human diversity every day.Michel Faber