Edward St. Aubyn Quotes

The leafless trees, with their black branches stretched hysterically in every direction, looked to him like illustrations of a central nervous system racked by disease: studies of human suffering anat...

An image flashed across her mind of two rams flinging their heads against each other on a rocky mountainside. What did the girl rams do? Faint with pleasure? Clap their cloven hooves? Lean against som...

Is there ever anything to get worried about,' Peter couldn't help asking, 'when there are so many things to worry about duly?

In the Dodge City of romantic love, crowded with betrayal, abandonment and rejection, it was better to fire first than to take the risk of being gunned down.

Once he had taken heroin he could imagine being without it;

The shock of standing again under the wide pale sky, completely exposed. This must be what the oyster feels when the lemon juice falls.

Lying on a pile of pillows and smaller cushions, slurping her coffee and playing with her cigarette smoke, she felt briefly that her thoughts were growing more subtle and expansive.

A face like a crème brûlée after the first blow of the spoon,

But that, after all, was the point of romantic folly. If it hadn’t all gone horribly wrong, it wouldn’t have been the real thing.

Observe Everything. Always think for yourself. Never let other people make important decisions for you.

How could he think his way out of the problem when the problem was the way he thought...

Nevertheless,

So much road and so few places, so much friendliness and so little intimacy, so much flavour and so little taste.

Earl, who seemed to be in an almost perpetual state of amazement at the things he said, shook his head again.

You can only give things up once they start to let you down.

Nevertheless, she treasured the idea that the Fauberts were connected to the earth in some wholesome way that the rest of us had forgotten.

And my heart is a handful of dust, / And the wheels go over my head, / And my bones are shaken with pain, / For into a shallow grave they are thrust, / Only a yard beneath the street,’ something, some...

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.

There was definitely an argument for getting some sleep; namely, that when he woke up the impact of the drugs would be stronger.

The two men left the building with a sense of achievement, counterbalanced by desire.