Under the Skin Quotes

“Shared suffering, she’d found, was no guarantee of intimacy.”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“Most distracting of all, though, was not the threat of danger but the allure of beauty.”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“The word troubled her, though. ‘Indispensable.’ It was a word people tended to resort to when dispensability was in the air.”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“she and they were all the same under the skin, weren’t they?”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“I sometimes think that the only things really worth talking about are the things people absolutely refuse to discuss.”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“The past was dwindling, like something shrinking to a speck in the rear-view mirror, and the future was shining through the windscreen, demanding her full attention.”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“You know,’ Amlis went on, ‘Some water fell out of the sky not so long ago.’ His voice was a little higher than usual, vulnerable with awe. ‘It just fell out of the sky. In little droplets, thousands of them close together. I looked up to see where they were coming from. They seemed to be materializing out of nowhere. I couldn’t believe it. Then I opened my mouth to the sky. Some droplets fell straight in. It was an indescribable feeling. As if nature was actually trying to nurture me.”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“In the end, though, vodsels couldn't do any of the things that really defined a human being. They couldn't siuwil, the couldn't mesnishtil,they had no concept of slan.”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“The variety of shapes, colours and textures under her feet was, she believed, literally infinite. It must be. Each shell, each pebble, each stone had been made what it was by aeons of submarine or subglacial massage. The indiscriminate, eternal devotion of nature to its numberless particles had an emotional importance for Isserley; it put the unfairness of human life into perspective.”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“Strange how a specimen like him, well cared for, healthy, free to roam the world, and blessed with a perfection of form which would surely have allowed him to breed with a greater selection of females than average, could still be so miserable. By contrast, other males, scarred by neglect, riddled with diseases, spurned by their kind, were occasionally known to radiate a contentment that seemed to arise from something more enigmatic than mere stupidity.”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“Needs could not bully her.”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“Nothing happened, and time stubbornly refused to pass.”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“They both sat in silence for the rest of the journey, as if conscious of having let each other down.”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“MERCY. It was a word she’d rarely encountered”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“Her invisible remains would combine, over time, with all the wonders under the sun. When it snowed she would be part of it, falling softly to earth, rising up again with the snow's evaporation, When it rained, she would be there in the spectral arch that spanned from firth to ground. She would help to wreathe the fields in mists, and yet would always be transparent to the stars. She would live forever.”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“The thing about vodsels was, people who knew nothing whatsoever about them were apt to misunderstand them terribly. There was always the tendency to anthropomorphize. A vodsel might do something which resembled a human action; it might make a sound analogous with human distress, or make a gesture analogous with human supplication, and that made the ignorant observer jump to conclusions. In the end, though, vodsels couldn’t do any of the things that really defined a human being. They couldn’t siuwil, they couldn’t mesnishtil, they had no concept of slan. In their brutishness, they’d never evolved to use hunshur; their communities were so rudimentary that hississins did not exist; nor did these creatures seem to see any need for chail, or even chailsinn.”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“Men! Armchair heroes the lot of them, while women were sent out to do the dirty work.”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“it was already tomorrow. She should have known from the beginning that it would end like this.”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“Unreality was swirling all around her like the delirious miasmas”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“ISSERLEY ALWAYS DROVE straight past a hitch-hiker when she first saw him, to give herself time to size him up. She was looking for big muscles: a hunk on legs. Puny, scrawny specimens were no use to her.”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“Isserley walked along the path the generations of sheep-flocks had made, up the tiers of the hill. In her mind, she was already”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“Well, I did my best,' said Amlis, in a self-deprecating purr. 'But I can tell when a challenge is hopeless. Anyway, it's not your minds I need to change.' And he glanced round at the contents of the ship's hull, acknowledging the scale of the slaughter and its commercial purpose.”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“To be brutally honest, all these men were falling apart, hair by hair and tooth by tooth, like over-used pieces of equipment, like tools bought cheap for a job that would outlast them. While”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“could indicate the cocky self-awareness of a male in prime condition.”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“Their consciousness was rudimentary.”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“The walls shrugged themselves loose from their foundations and slid towards the centre of the room, as if attracted by the struggle. The ceiling, a massive rectangular slab of concrete furrowed with fluorescent white, also shuddered loose and loomed down on her.”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“oh how she wondered, what she looked like to him, in his alien innocence.”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“The indiscriminate, eternal devotion of nature to its numberless particles had an emotional importance for Isserley; it put the”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“was a female. Isserley wasn’t interested in females, at least not in that way. Let them get picked up by someone else. If the hitcher was male, she usually went back for another look, unless he was an obvious weakling. Assuming he’d made a reasonable impression on her,”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“Well, I've confirmed my worst fears', he went on, disregarding her claim. 'This whole trade is based on terrible cruelty'. 'You don't know what cruelty is', she said, feeling all the places on and inside her body where she had been mutilated. How lucky this cosseted young man was, to have a 'worst fear' that concerned the welfare of exotic animals rather than any horrors he himself might have to face in the struggle for survival.”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin