Quotes from Edward St. Aubyn

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

humility was the ultimate arrogance

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.

Once you locked into language, all you could do was shuffle the greasy pack of a few thousand words that millions of people had used before.

He hated happy families with their mutual encouragement, and their demonstrative affection, and the impression they gave of valuing each other more than other people.

Capital erosion was another way to waste his substance, to become as thin and hollow as he felt, to lighten the burden of undeserved good fortune, and commit a symbolic suicide while he still dithered about the real one. He also nursed the opposite fantasy that when he became penniless he would discover some incandescent purpose born of his need to make money.

Resentment used to be something folks wanted to get rid of, now they water it and put it on a windowsill, like a favourite pot plant.

He sat astonished in front of the menu, as if he had never seen one before. There were pages of dead things – cows, shrimps, pigs, oysters, lambs – stretched out like a casualty list, accompanied by a brief description of how they had been treated since they died – skewered, grilled, smoked, and boiled. Christ, if they thought he was going to eat these things they must be mad.

Why had he said, 'Some combination of pride and terror'? Did he still think it was uncool to admit to any enthusiasm, even in front of his greatest friend?

He wondered if he could ever make his ego light enough to relax in not having to settle the meaning of things. What would that feel like?

Suicide wore the mask of self-rejection; but in reality nobody took their personality more seriously than the person who was planning to kill himself on its instructions. Nobody was more determined to stay in charge at any cost, to force the most mysterious aspect of life into their own imperious schedule.

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

most people found it hard to know what to do other than eat and drink around the clock in a conscientious drive to fill as many recycling bags as possible.

Is reality a consensual hallucination? And is a nervous breakdown in fact a refusal to consent? Go on, don't be shy, tell me what you think.

What state? A state of philosophical enquiry? I thought you would approve.

Mind you, what is there to do with money except spend it when you've got it or be bitter about it when haven't?

I hate this place,' she said. 'They're going to throw me out because they say I've got a bad attitude. But I only stay in bed because I'm so depressed.

It was unbelievable, there was the dry-cleaning ticket again. There must be more than one.

Mary that that 'swift return' was going a bit far. She glanced nervously at the coffin, as if Eleanor might fling off the lid and hop out any moment, throwing open her arms to embrace the word, with the awkward theatricality of the photograph on the order service.

Eating was only a temporary solution. But then all solutions were temporary, even death, and nothing gave him more faith in the existence of an afterlife than the inexorable sarcasm of Fate.

The Queen was saying only the other day that London property prices are so high that she doesn't know how she'd cope without Buckingham Palace,' Princess Margaret explained to a sympathetic Peter Porlock.

Do not take Vigilante if you are suffering from high blood pressure, low blood pressure, or normal blood pressure. Consult physician if you experience chest pains, swollen eyelids, elongated ears. . .

The question filled Patrick with the horror which assailed him when he was asked to consider another person's feelings. How was Debbie? How the fuck should he know? It was hard enough to rescue himself from the avalanche of his own feelings, without allowing the gloomy St Bernard of his attention to wander into other fields.

There was only one thing left to do: that authentic-sounding flush with which every junkie leaves a bathroom, hoping to deceive the audience that crowds his imagination.