I looked at him on the bed. He coughed once and a trail of brownish dead blood came out of his mouth and ran down the side of his chin. Then he stopped breathing. And I thought, I'll make sure I never end up here, either.

— Sebastian Faulks

I never for a moment considered killing myself, because it wouldn't have achieved anything.

— Sebastian Faulks

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.

— Sebastian Faulks

I suppose it was a dream that lasted really about fifty years. By the time universal education had begun to work properly, say 1925, and the time the first teachers started to hold back information, say 1975. So a fifty-year dream."" I think what's happened is that because they themselves know less than their predecessors, innovators and leaders today have remade the world in their own image. Spellchecks. Search engines. They've remodeled the world so that ignorance is not really a disadvantage. And I should think that increasingly they'll carry on reshaping the world to accommodate a net loss of knowledge.

— Sebastian Faulks

I suppose I was lucky enough to be educated at a time when teachers still thought children could handle knowledge. They trusted us. Then there came a time when they decided that because not every kid in the class could understand or remember those things they wouldn't teach them anymore because it wasn't fair on the less good ones. So they withheld knowledge. Then I suppose the next lot of teachers didn't have the knowledge to withhold.

— Sebastian Faulks

I think closeness to death would be pretty exhilarating in a way, and friendship, yes, and selflessness, a kind of selflessness, a sense of your own worthlessness, I think, is pretty exhilarating.

— Sebastian Faulks

It's only after the change is fully formed that you can see what's happened.

— Sebastian Faulks

It was entirely silent, and I tried to breathe its peace.

— Sebastian Faulks

I want to be careful not to throw all this away. This is happiness. I think this is what happiness is. I haven't got it yet, but I can sense it out there. Furthermore, I feel I'm close to it. Some days, I'm so close I can almost smell it.

— Sebastian Faulks

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