Sebastian Faulks Quote

At such moments of extreme panic and anguish you do manage that trick with time: you are at last free from the illusion that time is linear.In panic, time stops: past, present and future exist as a single overwhelming force. You then, perversely, time to appear to run forwards because the 'future' is the only place you can see an escape from this intolerable overload of feeling. But at such moments time doesn't move. And if time isn't running, then all events that we think of as past or future are actually happening simultaneously. That is the really terrifying thing. And you are subsumed. You're buried, as beneath an avalanche, by the weight of simultaneous events.

Sebastian Faulks

At such moments of extreme panic and anguish you do manage that trick with time: you are at last free from the illusion that time is linear.In panic, time stops: past, present and future exist as a single overwhelming force. You then, perversely, time to appear to run forwards because the 'future' is the only place you can see an escape from this intolerable overload of feeling. But at such moments time doesn't move. And if time isn't running, then all events that we think of as past or future are actually happening simultaneously. That is the really terrifying thing. And you are subsumed. You're buried, as beneath an avalanche, by the weight of simultaneous events.

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About Sebastian Faulks

Sebastian Charles Faulks (born 20 April 1953) is a British novelist, journalist and broadcaster. He is best known for his historical novels set in France – The Girl at the Lion d'Or, Birdsong and Charlotte Gray. He has also published novels with a contemporary setting, most recently A Week in December (2009) and Paris Echo, (2018) and a James Bond continuation novel, Devil May Care (2008), as well as a continuation of P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves series, Jeeves and the Wedding Bells (2013). He was a team captain on BBC Radio 4 literary quiz The Write Stuff.