Edward St Aubyn Quotes

It’s no use imagining that bringing great writers together inevitably precipitates great conversation.

Detachment is what interests me, seeing how people couldn’t have been any other way, how they were the product of forces that they had no control over.

Proust is a hero of mine. I read ‘A la recherche’ in one go, and I’m a very slow reader. It had an astonishing impact, reading it on my own and being my main company. I think Proust is the most intelligent person to ever have written a novel.

The whole Melrose series is an attempt to tell the truth, and is based on the idea that there is some salutary or liberating power in telling the truth.

No pain is too small if it hurts, but any pain is too big if it’s cherished.

It seems people spend the majority of their lives believing they’re dying, with the only consolation being that at one point they get to be right.

The thing about the ‘Melrose’ novels is that I have to feel they’re impossible when I set out.

I’m not trying to uncover the facts of my life but to discover the dramatic truth of the situations I was in.

Well, the attractive thing about the subject of happiness is that it is notoriously difficult to write.

The first book I fell in love with was ‘Little Toot,’ the story of an adorable tugboat operating out of New York Harbor.

Everything was usual. That was depression: being stuck, clinging to an out-of-date version of oneself.

I think that some laughter comes from escaped horror, doesn’t it?

I’m really not responsible for what mental operation people have when they’re reading my books other than the ones which are created by literary effects.

People never remeber happiness with the care that they lavish on preserving every detail of their suffering.