All my books are about one major idea and two or three subsidiary ones. I have thought a lot about music when constructing books, and I like the way in music that themes come back. Sebastian Faulks More Quotes by Sebastian Faulks More Quotes From Sebastian Faulks The thought of all that happiness was hard to bear. What's the point of happiness when all it does is throw the facts of dying into clear relief? Sebastian Faulks relief dying doe The thing about opium is that it makes pain or difficulty unimaginable. Sebastian Faulks opium difficulty pain Why take drugs specifically designed to send you insane? Sebastian Faulks drug insane That sense of happiness just out beyond my reach - I'm not sure I'd grasped that exactly, but I'd got something close to it, contentment maybe, or at least a functioning routine with regular rewards. Sebastian Faulks routine rewards contentment As he rounded the corner, he saw two dozen men, naked to the waist, digging a hole thirty yards square at the side of the path. For a moment he was baffled. It seemed to have no agricultural purpose; there was no more planting or ploughing to be done. Then he realized what it was. They were digging a mass grave. He thought of shouting an order to about turn or at least to avert their eyes, but they were almost on it, and some of them had already seen their burial place. The songs died on their lips and the air was reclaimed by the birds. Sebastian Faulks eye song men I am driven by a greater force than I can resist. I believe that force has its own reason and its own morality even if they may never be clear to me while I am alive Sebastian Faulks alive may believe I don't think you ever understand your life - not till it's finished and probably not then either. The more I live the less I seem to understand. Sebastian Faulks finished seems thinking But I think if any song can touch the heart, then one should value it. Sebastian Faulks heart song thinking It's better to have a malign providence than an indifferent one. Sebastian Faulks indifferent providence Some crime against nature is about to be committed. I feel it in my veins. These men and boys are grocers and clerks, gardeners and fathers - fathers of small children. A country cannot bear to lose them. Sebastian Faulks country father children Sometimes my whole life seems like a dream; occasionally I think that someone else has lived it for me. The events and the sensations, the stories and the things that make me what I am in the eyes of other people, the list of facts that make my life ... They could be mine, they might be yours. Sebastian Faulks eye dream thinking If not just the brain but the quirks that made the individual were composed of recycled matter only, it was hard to be sure where the edges of one such being ended and another person began. Sebastian Faulks individual matter brain Something had been buried that was not yet dead. Sebastian Faulks buried I have written millions of words about contemporary England - in journalism. Why don't I take it as the background for a novel? I may do one day. But the simple answer is that it does not excite the novelistic part of my brain; it does not fire it up. Sebastian Faulks simple fire brain 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. Sebastian Faulks you experience love people What I like in novels that I read and enjoy is interplay of theme: the mystery of how we seem to be so separate as human beings. Sebastian Faulks human like enjoy mystery 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. Sebastian Faulks serious circumstances people way 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. Sebastian Faulks yourself you life people If I hadn't read all of Jane Austen and DH Lawrence, Tolstoy and Proust, as well as the more fun stuff, I wouldn't know how to break bad news, how to sympathise, how to be a friend or a lover, because I wouldn't have any idea what was going on in anybody else's mind. Sebastian Faulks friend news mind fun My ideal relationship with the reader is that at certain points they will have said, 'I'm finding this quite tough, but I'm going to hang in there,' then at the end they will say, 'Oh God, I'm glad I hung on, it was so worth it.' Sebastian Faulks end tough god relationship
