176 Quotes by Sebastian Faulks

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.

I am a romantic, in a literary way, by which I mean the Romantic poets, who thought just because a sensation is fleeting doesn't mean it isn't valuable. If the only criterion of value is whether something lasts, then the whole of human life is a waste of time.

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.

In the 1970s, British food was beginning to get good, whereas in France it was just starting its long, sad decline. My most memorable meals, however, have been in Italy.

Bond doesn't have an inner life. There would be moments when I'd think, 'We need to gather our thoughts here and have a breather,' where in another novel you'd slow the pace, have some description and see what Bond feels about this. But Bond doesn't reflect. All you can do is move on to the next bomb or shark or car.

I believe your stomach tells you what it wants, and I don't think mine asks for anything that unhealthy. I'm a trained health machine.

If I could eat only one thing for the rest of my life, it would be rhubarb fool, which I make with ginger and a hint of elderflower cordial.

The nicest characters in 'A Week in December' are, in fact, Muslims - and their religious devotion is one of the things that defines them.

There's no such thing as identity: it's something we have to believe in to make life more tolerable.